Not a Comedy, but Still Entertaining

Rating: 7/10 (31 August 2016)

War Dogs follows two young stoners as they weasel their way into the arms business and somehow manage to land a $300million military contract with the government, supplying guns, grenades, and ammunition to the Afghan army circa 2008. They find they have to cut a few corners and forge a few documents to make sure it all runs smoothly, which it does, until it doesn't. Based on a true story, a lot of the broader strokes are public record, but being a movie, certain events have naturally been added or embellished to make them a little more interesting (no-one wants to watch two stoners sat in front of their computers for two hours).
First thing I have to note is that the marketing lies. It lies really hard in order to get your seat in the cinema. The way it does that is by painting a different movie to what you get. In some ways it's understandably easier to market this film as a comedy, especially when you emblazon Todd Phillips' and Jonah Hill's names all over it. There are light-hearted moments and the odd joke, but almost every humorous moment is packed into the trailers. War Dogs is a drama/thriller first. This isn't a criticism, I'm just trying to manage expectations. Don't go in expecting The Hangover with arms dealers, because that's not this movie.
That said, War Dogs plays a lot like Wolf of Wall Street meets Lord of War (the latter of which the real Efraim Diveroli was apparently obsessed with at the time). Jonah Hill pretty much plays the same character he did in Wolf of Wall Street as well. War Dogs plays out as a fundamentally anti- war/anti-military movie though. That's the only message you can really take from it as it highlights how ridiculous the whole situation is. These are two stoner kids running Barettas through Iraq, to be greeted with stacks of Hussain's billions just sitting in a warehouse, paying for the US invasion. When they inevitably get busted for fraud, David Packouz suffers only seven months of house arrest, which is nothing. A patsy he may have been, but it hardly put a dent in his life considering how serious his crimes were, and that's because the military was willing to turn a blind eye to the Chinese ammunition they were being sold, because it fuelled their war for a discount price.
Jonah Hill and Miles Teller are pretty great though, even if they do just play to their typecasts. As I mentioned, Jonah Hill pretty much plays the same love-to-hate character he did in Wolf of Wall Street, only fatter, and ever so slightly more of a douchebag. He does it well though. Alarmingly well. His weight and his high-pitched laugh are used to comedic effect (if that's the kind of thing that amuses you, the group of lads sat behind me sniggered every time Hill laughed), and in a way to mock the real Diveroli, but largely holds no factual accuracy (Diveroli is actually quite well-built). Miles Teller plays his everyman out-of-depth character really well as well, with a beautiful young wife and baby daughter on the way providing him a motivation for getting into the business in the first place. Teller's Packouz is our character to root for, painted likable if slightly inept. Ultimately though, it all works because Teller and Hill share a fantastic chemistry that is both engaging and entertaining.
War Dogs isn't a must-see movie by any stretch of the imagination. It's not particularly original, it's marketing was a massive misfire, and his underlying message is a little haphazard. That said I can't say I found myself bored at any point in the film's runtime. The acting and character work was done really well, and the story balanced out it's serious moments with light-hearted humour just enough without bowing into full-comedy mode. I give War Dogs a respectable 7/10