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Todd Phillips
August 19, 2016
When his devoted girlfriend, Iz (Ana De Armas), announces her pregnancy, twenty-something David Packouz (Miles Teller), who is working as a massage therapist in sunny Miami Beach in 2005, finds himself facing a financial crisis. When Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill), a brazen international arms dealer and David’s long-lost high school friend, enters the picture as the United States is engaged in combat in both Iraq and Afghanistan, David instantly becomes one-half of Efraim’s successful business dealing in weapons. The duo’s immoral mentality is now increasingly paying off and helping to make their sketchy company well-known; nonetheless, blunders do occur in this risky line of work.
Efraim Diveroli is portrayed by Jonah Hill as the young person whose brand of friendliness is harsh, annoying, and quite transparent—yet just sincere enough to be magnetic. Hill makes sure to show how hollow Diveroli is at the core, despite appearing to be a loudmouth who lives an even louder life. He does whatever it takes to close a deal, even if that means he has to spit or shit on his relationships.
Miles Teller’s David Packouz happily takes the excrement. He does whatever he can to support his family while also questioning Efraim’s methods, so we think of Packouz as the good guy. There was one part of the movie when Efraim tried getting an investor, and Packouz narrated “that was Efraim’s genius, he would find out who someone wanted him to be, and he would become that person.” We don’t blame Packouz because he fell under his spell, and just hasn’t realized it yet.
The script contains numerous allusions to War Dogs’ pop culture forebears, and it also has a casual, shockingly low-stakes “isn’t the system really at blame here?” vibe. Therefore, War Dogs is a fun and silly, if repetitive, examination of the banality of war profiteering and the staggering sums of money that keep the world awash in weapons and ammunition. There is a comical part where the military tells the couple that their bid came in about $50 million beneath the next lowest offer for a job, which makes the story’s climax more ironic. No one appears to realize how much this stuff is worth.
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