yeah, pretty enjoyable, but wouldn't say it's a comedy

Rating: 7/10 (19 June 2020)

War Dogs is a movie about down on luck David Packouz (Miles Teller) and his childhood friend Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill). Diveroli is a small arms dealer, taking the "crumbs" of weapons contracts from the military. Diveroli asks Packouz to partner with him and the two slowly move up, only to take a big jump in status with a risky arms trade to the US military in Iraq. With a nice gulp of success, they decide to stop with the crumbs and eat the whole pie with a 100 million AK-47 bullet order. Things come crashing down as Diveroli becomes greedier and angrier.
It's weird that this movie is tagged as a comedy/crime/biography. The comedy elements completely failed as I don't recall any memorable moments. If anything, it got in the way of the story.
But the story is interesting, suspenseful where it needs to be. Jonah Hill does an excellent job as playing a greasy slimeball type of guy -- a used car salesman stereotype that you wouldn't trust and didn't like, but know that he'd get the job done. Packouz is the scarier character in that he seemed to have the morals that Diveroli lacked, but, because he was poor and a soon to be father, probably saw Diveroli as a godsend. Had Packouz been a bit better off, he probably wouldn't have even considered Diveroli's offer. Indeed, Diveroli might have offered the partnership because he knew Packouz was down on his luck.
Some things seem hard to believe, but given it's based on a true story and I don't know the true story, I don't know what was truth, what was exaggeration, or what was completely made up. But I did enjoy the ride.
Yeah, this type of movie has been done before (Blow, Lord of War, Wolf of Wall Street), but I don't think this was trying to be a novel concept. It told a story of something that actually happened, and for that, it did it well. I did think Lord of War was far better, and only bring that movie up in case someone liked War Dogs and was looking for something similar.