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09/01/2016 12:01 AMRated R
War Dogs is a new film from director Todd Phillips (The Hangover and Old School) that is based on the true story of two young men from Miami who, as arms dealers in the mid-2000s, won a $300 million contract from the Pentagon. The story about their quick rise to becoming very successful and very wealthy arms dealers is a fascinating one.
Miles Teller (The Spectacular Now and Whiplash) is David Packouz, a massage therapist living in Miami who is searching for a way to make better money. He thinks he has stumbled onto something really big when he gets the opportunity to purchase a huge quantity of high quality bed sheets, and then turn around and sell them to nursing homes for profit. It turns out for David that the only thing he truly stumbled onto with that situation, however, is being stuck with caseloads of bed sheets that no one wants to buy and losing thousands of dollars very quickly.
When David’s childhood best friend Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill of This Is the End and 21 Jump Street) arrives back in Miami after being gone for years, David and Efraim immediately reconnect. David admires Efraim’s seemingly savvy business sense and overlooks his more negative qualities, including the fact that he is downright conniving, sometimes untrustworthy, and oftentimes dabbling in things that are illegal.
Efraim is a small time arms dealer who goes after small, overlooked contracts from the government to supply weapons and ammunition. He makes a profit being the middleman on these deals. It isn’t long until Efraim brings David on board in his business dealings at his company, AEY Inc. David is a natural at securing deals and making connections on the phone, which is how they do most of their business.
To secure deals and make cash, Efraim is willing to do anything—lie, cheat, and even travel to dangerous war zone areas far from his cushy life in Miami. David sees and admires Efraim’s lifestyle and follows Efraim wherever he goes—to nightclubs spent with prostitutes and high on drugs, and beyond to Iraq’s Triangle of Death, attempting to secure deals.
Everything eventually unravels for the two. Along with the assistance of a fellow arms dealer named Henry Girard (Bradley Cooper of Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle) who just so happens to be on America’s terrorist watch list, David and Efraim secure a $300 million deal with the Pentagon to arm America’s allies in Afghanistan. This deal is larger than any other deal they have ever made and David realizes that they are in way over their heads around the same time that he starts realizing that his partner and best friend Efraim isn’t someone he can trust.
Teller is suddenly everywhere in Hollywood and for good reason—he can nail a role and bring a lot to a film, and that is certainly what he does in War Dogs. He keeps Packouz likable even as he does some very bad things. Hill, of course, is also everywhere in the industry and he once again gives a very memorable performance as the sidekick to the main character just as viewers saw him do so masterfully in Superbad and The Wolf of Wall Street, among many other films in which he has starred.
So much of what happens in War Dogs seems so farfetched and crazy that is feels unlikely to have truly happened, but it did, which is what makes it such a captivating story. The film doesn’t always feel nearly as captivating as the story itself though, with its chapter headings, voiceovers, and its smack-you-in-the-face anti-Bush and Cheney sentiment, but it’s still a very interesting watch.
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