By Emilio Frenk
Director: Todd Phillips
Cast: Jonah Hill, Miles Teller, Kevin Pollack, Ana de Armas Bradley Cooper.
Rating: Excellent.
Todd Phillips, Director of“The Hangover Trilogy” comes with “War Dogs” a movie based on real events and I have to say I was very surprised with the product.
Based on the Rolling Stone magazine article “Arms and Dudes” written by Guy Lawson, “War Dogs” tells the story of David Packouz (Miles Teller) a Miami massage therapist who reunites with his friend from Junior High Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill) an entrepeuneur and international arms dealer.
In a lunch meeting Diveroli convinces Packhouz to work with him in his business which at the beginning David disagrees but ends up working with him leading to a partnership.
They start at the beginning very good supplying weapons to the army and they are starting to live “The American Dream”.
The real problem starts when they land a 300 million dollar contract to supply weapons to the United States troops in Afganistan.
Both Diveroli and Packhouz will be tempted by greed and eventually to all kinds of trouble.
One of the things that I found interesting in “War Dogs” is that besides is a theme that took place during the Bush era, Todd Phillips was both clever and smart to add his touch of The Hangover movies and the movie has very good elements of comedy.
The script also written by Phillips and the Directing are really smart and the use of the music was another element that I really liked of the movie and it remind me of how Martin Scorsese uses songs from other artists in his movies and here it has been done the same way.
Both Miles Teller and Jonah Hill are really fun and they are both explosive in this movie and it does deliver the goods. The score from Cliff Martínez, who is well known for doing the scores of movies like “Drive” and most recently “The Neon Demon” is superb and he is one of the most versatile composers today.
Some parts of the Third Act of the movie didn´t necessarily worked but still the movie was engaging and entertainng. The ending of the film I think it can be open for debate and I leave you reader to interpret it.
I give a huge recommendation to "War Dogs" for the performances, script and direction and I hope you enjoy as much as I did.