Worth The Ride!

Rating: 8/10 (24 December 2016)

While watching this film about two guys who figured out a way to virtually have the American Government hand them $300 million dollars, I found myself rooting desperately for them, much akin to the Bad News Bears hitting a bottom of the ninth grand slam for the Little League World Series. It wasn't so much about bilking the US government for something as American as guns, it was about a couple of loose playing, fast talking societal rejects getting the upper hand where they just had no business with any hand at all. This movie, which is promoted as being fact based, is definitely worth your time. Jonah Hill plays Efraim Diveroli, a small time hustler who has figured a way to play in in the big game of procurement for Government contracts, specifically supplying arms to the Pentagon. He works on a little known program implemented after it was revealed that US VP Dick Cheney's associates and friends were benefactors of huge government military contracts. The procurement program allows small American businesses to participate in the provision of supplies to the American government's war effort. The beauty of Efraim's methods included scanning the back pages of the government's website listing all contracts up for bid, and then digging out the small, almost overlooked "Requests For Proposals" which the big players understandably avoid. As he says, "I live on the crumbs". His efforts pay off, and he begins to fill his pockets on small contracts, working as a middleman, never touching or seeing the arms he sells, while he dances the nights away in the hot nightclubs of Miami and beds prostitutes for good measure. Enter David Packouz (Miles Teller) who ekes out his living as a "licenced masseuse", dragging his massage table from one waterfront mansion to another. However, he knows there is more out there for him and he's going to get his slice of American Pie. While in the midst of an idea to sell bed sheets to retirement homes in South Florida, he realizes that he has blown his life savings on 64 cartons of sheets, and in spite of his best efforts, he is unable to sell them. He's desperate, his girlfriend is pregnant, and he is resigned to losing his investment and having to refocus his efforts on his massage business, which he is trying to avoid. As luck would have it, during a funeral in Miami, David sees his childhood friend, Efraim Diveroli, recently relocated from California, suntanned and adorned by designer sunglasses sitting a few feet away. A short catch up on the happenings, recounting days as eleven year olds at summer camp, and a night prowling the nightclubs together, before long, Efraim and David are business partners and small arms dealers. Using the same strategy of picking up contracts which nobody wants, David begins to learn the ins and outs of the business quickly and before long, both men have matching Porsches, apartments in same high-rise building on the beach, plenty of cocaine, and money falling out of their pockets in the hot spots of South Beach. What is fascinating about the story however, is the sheer luck which they encounter, when they find a contract on the US government's procurement website for ammunition and arms needed in Iraq which could total over 300 million dollars. They virtually have no idea how to get it, and this is where it all gets interesting, they pull off the impossible. They win the contract, and in loser fashion, they are told their bid was close to $50 million dollars less than the next competing bid, which to them is money left on the table. They can't believe it. However, the story is only beginning here, and it is the vehicle to reveal the depth of integrity and honesty of our protagonists, their personal beliefs and the test of their friendship. Its a roller coaster ride through wrestling and pinning down the American dream through greed and capitalism and how it changes who we are. The bottom line is that this movie comes through on depicting just how greed can lay the groundwork for betrayals on every level of a friendship.