If Dwight Eisenhower’s worst nightmare of the “disastrous rise of misplaced power” in the military-industrial complex took human form, it would probably appear as Jonah Hill, cackling and firing a machine gun like a teenager who’s seen Scarface one too many times.
War Dogs gets its firepower from the true story, detailed in Rolling Stone in 2011, of two twenty-something potheads who bluffed their way into multi-million dollar deals running guns for the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Dramatic embellishments abound, of course.) But it’s Hill, note-perfect as the ugliest American and the devilish embodiment of an “arms procurement process” gone wrong, who makes this comedy-thriller from director Todd Phillips (The Hangover) one of the summer’s bigger surprises.
Hill is Efraim Diveroli, a small-time arms dealer picking up the plentiful crumbs of weapons contracts stemming from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Efraim’s not much for politics, but he has an appreciation for basic economics. As he starts taking bigger pieces of the Cheney-era defense industry pie, Efraim recruits his old high school pal David Packouz (Miles Teller, fine as the straight man), a massage therapist in Miami, as a partner.
Efraim and David are soon living the American Dream, making fortunes through their own arrogant bravado while exporting death around the globe. As the stakes get higher — one deal requires a trip through Iraq’s cheerfully named “Triangle of Death” — and the deals get bigger, their partners (a coolly menacing Bradley Cooper) and practices get more disreputable.
Phillips, who also co-wrote the script, draws out the humor and horror inherent in seeing these two despicable dopes tied up in geopolitics. Most of the broader jokes hit their marks. Phillips also proves himself adept at directing the movie’s tense dramatic sequences, although a sub-plot about David’s nascent family fizzles, and the character’s out-of-nowhere pangs of conscience feel unearned.
There’s some of The Wolf of Wall Street in the film’s glamorous portrayal of bad men having good times doing bad things, at least until the arc of the moral universe bends violently against them. With a director known for comedy turning his attention to a serious political issue from yesterday’s headlines, Phillips’ film is also likely to draw comparisons to The Big Short.
War Dogs isn’t as inspired as those movies, which were both more articulate and more profoundly venomous toward the crimes they explored. Phillips, ever the crowd-pleaser, can’t muster up the furious bile this subject really deserves.
For a memorable depiction of American folly, though, look no further than Hill’s turn in this movie. He’s no stranger to playing amoral man-children, but this is special. Hill sweats psychopathic charm as Efraim, the overweight, over-entitled, money-obsessed gun nut assured in the knowledge that, in the words of Tony Montana, the world is his. Nothing, certainly not failure, will convince him otherwise.
