In 2001, 16-year-old Efraim Diveroli bought a shell company from his father called AEY, Inc. While the company was registered as a printing business, Diveroli used it as an arms company selling weapons to the US Government as well as others around the world. In 2005, Diveroli brought on his friend, 23-year-old David Packouz, who was a massage therapist at the time. By 2006, the pair had won 149 weapons contracts worth $10.5 million. The movie War Dogs, directed by Todd Phillips, tells this unbelievably true story of two stoner friends to wind up scoring a $300 million contract with the U.S.
Starring Jonah Hill as Efraim Diveroli and Miles Teller as David Packouz, War Dogs picks up in 2005 after Diveroli has already started the business. We see Packouz’s life as a massage therapist and how he wants to do right by his family. Diveroli is introduced at a mutual friend’s funeral and the two soon slip right back into their childhood friendship. While Diveroli tells Packouz what he does, it isn’t really brought into full light until Diveroli pulls an automatic gun out of his trunk on some drug dealers for shorting him on weed. Soon Diveroli makes the pitch to Packouz to join AEY, Inc., who eventually agrees. This leads into a montage of Diveroli training him on how to score the contracts. Soon the two land the infamous $300 million deal and we see where the whole thing takes a turn for the worst.
The movie takes a while to get started and has some slow parts throughout which Phillips and the writers attempted to be make up by sprinkling some comic relief throughout. However, I still found myself zoning out at times waiting for more interesting parts to happen. Though there is a little bit of character building of Packouz in the beginning, we see very little, if any, of Diveroli. The lack of character building sort of makes the characters seem somewhat flat and hard to really invest in. At most, I found myself invested in Packouz since it was fairly well established that he is basically just trying to give his family a better life. However, when it comes to acting comparisons, Jonah Hill is the one that really shines in this movie. While no stranger to playing a stoner or a less than favorable character, Hill pulls of the role of scumbag well. Miles Teller, while he played his part well and offered some of the less scumbaggy moments, couldn’t help but fall into the shadow of Hill and his character.
Honestly, I knew nothing about the actual story until after the movie. If I could only pick one good thing to say about the movie, I would have to say it was how well it stuck to the overall story. While I am sure it filled in some details here and there, after reading the story of the real-life war dogs, I was amazed at how accurate the movie seemed to be. Which, to me, the story was what was best about the movie. The story of two twenty-something-year-old friends becoming arms dealers and working with the U.S. government is fascinating to me. The movie did a great job in showing how the system works and how little companies, like AEY, can take advantage of it. It also gives a humorous insight into how the government deals with arms dealers, the restrictions these dealers face when it comes to doing business in certain countries, and the little repercussions faced when the dealers commit fraud.
Will War Dogs win any awards? Most likely not. Is it an interesting, fun, albeit at times tedious movie to watch to beat the summer heat? Absolutely. While the writing and acting was nothing extraordinarily special, it was the story itself that I really enjoyed. I don’t think that this was a terrible movie by any means, I just don’t think that it does a good enough job in standing out against the other movies at the box office. While the character building could have been improved, I think the pace of the movie would be hard to improve without changing the story itself. That becomes a double-edged sword. Overall I think this was a decent movie and worth seeing if you find the story appealing.
Rating: 3/5 Atoms
from Nerd Reactor
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