A Generically Presented but Intriguing Story

Rating: 6/10 (27 December 2016)

War Dogs follows a man who, after meeting up with his best friend from school, joins him in working for his arms company. Ultimately , however, they are pushed to commit more and more illegal acts for the sake of more money.
For starters this is, and was, a really intriguing premise to me. It's based on a true story, and I was curious as to how it'd play out. The path the story takes is an interesting one, and I was happy to see that.
The acting is pretty good. Jonah Hill is definitely one of the standouts, and although this definitely isn't an amazing performance, it's a pretty good one. Miles Teller is subtly really good as well. He gets really into this role where he plays the morality of the company, and you can tell that he feels most every line in the movie. He's not trying to fake it like some actors. After the failure that was Fant4stic (2015), I think he was probably seeking redemption somewhere. And he found it here.
Unfortunately this otherwise great story is weighed down by it's presentation. In the technical aspect, this is a very bland movie. The way it's shot, the way it handles itself, it's all very generic. Even the writing is a lot of the time. It's just all so mediocre in that sense, it doesn't do really anything with this story on the technical spectrum.
On top of that, this is like Plot Convenience: The Movie. There were so many points where I found my wondering how the characters would get out of their situation, only to find out minutes later that everything works out perfectly with some rushed resolution. It got incredibly frustrating after a while and really took away from the movie. I know it's based on a true story and claiming that these events did happen, but I don't care about the source material. I think it's more interesting to see an intriguing, realistic movie and I'd sacrifice accuracy any day for that. Sure, it is possible for a movie like this to have plot conveniences and still make sense, and these still more or less did, but considering how poorly presented the whole movie is it feels like just another Hollywood movie. It doesn't seem real really, and as such it comes off as even more generic and Hollywood-ized when these conveniences present themselves.
Overall War Dogs was largely a disappointment. While the acting and story are both near great, the presentation and writing proved lackluster most all the time. In the end I'd still recommend this movie simply for the story.