War Dogs - More Woof Then Bark

Certificate – 15

Directed by – Todd Phillips

Starring – Jonah Hill; Miles Teller; Ana de Armas; J. B. Blanc; Bradley Cooper; Barry Livingston.

Running Time – 114 minutes (1 hour 54 minutes)

★★★✩✩

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I’m going to let you know now I don’t know how I feel about this film. All I can say in this intro is War Dogs is the best film Phillips has directed since The Hangover, let’s be honest it wasn’t going to be that hard.

“War Dogs” follows two friends in their early 20s ,David Packouz and Efraim Diveroli (Teller and Hill), living in Miami Beach during the Iraq War who exploit a little-known government initiative that allows smaller businesses to bid on U.S. Military contracts.  Starting small, they begin raking in big money and are living the high life.  But the pair gets in over their heads when they land a 300 million dollar deal to arm the Afghan military—a deal that puts them in business with some very shady people, not the least of which turns out to be the U.S. Government.

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As “based on a True Story” goes it was interesting and finding out all this information about how the US government handled their arms deals and realising how stupid George Bush and his administration really was fascinating.

This film did do something impressive, Teller plays a likeable person and for me, this is a big thing because even though he’s a talented actor I’ve never found myself liking or caring about any of his characters. I also enjoyed his voiceover helping the audience explain certain things.

However, it was Hill who plays the biggest dickhead in the film. He reminds me of when Hill played himself in This Is The End and Jay Baruchel is the only person who sees him as a complete knob, that’s how I feel about Hill in this film. That’s down to his brilliant performance and even though you’ll dislike this arse, he brings the comedy to the film and his laugh will make you laugh every time.

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On the other hand, it’s great Teller’s and Hill’s characters were so developed it annoyed me when we knew next to nothing about the ONLY female character. The things we did learn about Armas’ character was her name, she was Packouz girlfriend and she doesn’t like war or being lied too. That’s it. I’m not asking for a lot just a quick voiceover from Teller when we first see them together saying “this is such and such, we met here and she’s a …” it just helps with rounding the character.

Now, even though Hill’s comedy did help bring some relief, tonally this film is a bit all over the place from drama to comedy for a quick second going straight back into drama and it felt like Phillips didn’t know what he wanted out of the film.

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The final 5-10 minutes felt a little rushed and it would have so much more helpful to see what happened when shit hit the fan because I didn’t truly understand the ending.

Even when saying this, the film was too long and the story could’ve been told in 100 minutes (1 hour 40 minutes).

When it comes down to it and seeing arms dealers on screen Hill and Teller have nothing on Huge Laurie in The Night Manager, who is much classier.

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Verdict

Hill and Teller deliver brilliant performances in Phillips’ best film since The Hangover and even though the story was interesting, tonally the film was everywhere and was too long with a hushed ending.