Familiar and predictable, but it's confidently directed with plenty of energy and enthusiasm

Rating: 6/10 (30 December 2016)

David Packhouz (Miles Teller) is employed as a masseuse but has a burning desire to make a better life for himself. When Packhouz becomes reacquainted with his old friend Efram Diveroli (Jonah Hill) he is given the shot at the big time that he has always craved; Diveroli offers Packhouz the chance to go into partnership whereby the two of them are middle men arms dealers who supply the US Military with weapons. Both men taste success and become very rich, but with bigger contracts comes bigger risks and the two friends quickly find themselves out of their depth...
War Dogs is effectively a glammed up version of Lord Of War (another film that I believe was based on a true story). What you get here is a fairly predictable rise and fall narrative, but to be fair Todd Phillips does direct the film with plenty of energy and enthusiasm and I have to admit that I wasn't bored at any point during the film. Although these things do make the film enjoyable and fun to watch I couldn't help but wonder if Phillips was enjoying himself a little too much here; he does tend to embellish a little too much and perhaps glamourises Diveroli and Packhouz more than he should - the way that Diveroli and Packhouz talk about and make references to the film Scarface only reinforces this point - did this really happen or did Phillips throw these references in to justify his glamorisation of the characters and events? Although I've put this forward as a criticism this approach is something that I like more than dislike as it does at least make the film a fairly enjoyable experience.
As far as acting performances go then this one definitely belongs to Jonah Hill; he basically channels the same character he played in Wolf Of Wall Street and clearly understands what kind of picture that Phillips intend to make. He was an interesting character who has more faces than Big Ben and is able to become whoever he needs to become to get money or contracts - he has an almost sociopathic charm to him. Teller is OK here, but he's still an actor that I'm struggling to get to grips with and seems to be in Hill's shadow here. Bradley Cooper is pretty flat in his respective role and he looked really creepy in those ridiculous glasses...
Despite being predictable, familiar and overly-glamourised I have to admit that this film was enjoyable and the story was quite interesting. Hill's energy, enthusiasm, and the manipulative nature of his character made the film stand out that little bit more and made the journey from A to B perhaps more involving than it could have been. It's nothing special and isn't remotely original, but the 114 minutes that I spent watching the film did pass by fairly painlessly.