If the aim of director Todd Phillips was make War Dogs a decent comedy, as the trailer would suggest, then he has completely missed the mark. True, comedy is open to interpretation, but on watching this film at the cinema not a single person laughed. Not even once. However it is by no means a bad film. War Dogs actually functions surprisingly well as a drama. Based on a true story about two young men who manage to get their hands on a $300 million contract to supply weapons to US troops in Iraq, it stars Jonah Hill and Miles Teller as the leading duo. And their performances are really quite good, especially Hill who constantly gives off an air of complete arrogance and recklessness. His character, Efraim Diveroli, is the driving force behind the narrative, making bad decisions and cajoling his partner into doing increasingly immoral and illegal things in pursuit of copious amounts of money. Whilst Teller is overshadowed by Hill throughout, his portrayal of the much more sensible David Packouz is good, and works well as a counterpart to Hill's much more outrageous character. Although David is exceedingly boring by comparison, given that he is simply portrayed as a very average, ordinary guy. The two actors work well together, and in the absence of anything remotely amusing their complex and troubled friendship keeps things interesting.
The strange thing about this film, though, is that it doesn't really have a moral standpoint. It's an engaging account of some shocking events, and yet it remains for the most part impartial. It certainly doesn't condone the actions of its leading characters, but it doesn't condemn them either. Nor does it place blame on the US government. For a supposed comedy, there is a distinct lack of satire and with the exception of a couple of scenes it rarely stresses just how deplorable the entire situation is. Probably the most sobering part of the film is at the very start, where we are told how many hundreds of thousands of dollars it costs to equip just one soldier. But again no real opinion of war is expressed, we're merely given cold, hard facts. Other than this the only scene that has much impact is where Efraim and David drive a van full of weapons to Baghdad through what they later find out is 'the triangle of death'.Over the course of the film there are numerous references to Scarface, mostly in Efraim's dialogue. It seems almost as though they are trying to make a direct comparison between Al Pacino's immortal gangster and the young, careless protagonists of this film. The only way in which War Dogs even remotely resembles a gangster movie is the narrative structure, which begins with their swift rise to fame and ends in their downfall. But despite not really knowing what genre it is, this film is interesting and engaging, and Jonah Hill definitely stands out.
Definitely not a comedy but a half decent drama, War Dogs features some good performances from it's leading cast, and manages to be an engaging account of real life events. Even if it's viewpoint remains on the fence.
