Review of War Dogs (2016) by Lane Z — 22 Nov 2016

What elevates War Dogs above its dodgy script are its two leads: Miles Teller and Jonah Hill. While both of them put forth solid performances, especially Hill who continuously acts on a level higher than his peers in any roll, it feels like War Dogs doesn't go far enough in the two-hour allotment.

What I mean by that is it feels like a Scorsese movie that's had all the fat trimmed off of it. We get the voice over from Teller throughout the film. We get the "chapters" every 15-20 minutes, which almost feels like they were thrown in to put a stamp on the previous chapter drying out. And that's just it. We have a script here from Todd Phillips built around its two leads with the story as the filler. Not the other way around. Heck, outside of some dialogue, we never really see Hill's character fully fleshed out.

But the skeleton of the story is there, and it's fun. Two young kids turn into gun runners who end up working with the US government on supplying impoverished countries in the Middle East. While we don't really get a true master class in a real-world problem like The Big Short gave us with the real estate crisis back in 2008, it's nice to shed a light on something not many people know about during the same time.

I'm not saying this movie needed to be an extra 30 minutes and be set in Boston. In fact, the locale of Miami was a nice refresher, and it gave us a chance to make sense of the casting with Ana de Arma, who is Cuban and beautiful. Teller plays second fiddle to Hill, but both carry Phillips script on their backs.