Like many people I find stories that are based on real events, especially unbelievable events to be fascinating. I generally tend to also enjoy films that are somewhat related to war. Enter: War Dogs.

Starring primarily Jonah Hill and Miles Teller, this is story about 2 young guys (early 20's) who end up winning one of the largest privately offered weapons supply contracts for the US military ever. They were able to accomplish this by almost entirely fabricating their documents and by procuring munitions from illegal sources and simply duping the officials involved into believing them.


The film is heavily fictionalized and this is understandable because when Hollywood says "based on a true story" it normally means one or two things are true and the rest is made up. That is ok with me but Efraim Diveroli (Hill) and David Packouz (Teller) are real people who really were arms dealers in their 20's.

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So this movie is made exciting because at the start of it David (again, Teller) is a down on his luck dude in his 20's who runs into an old friend Efraim (again, Hill) at a funeral and then finds out that Efraim is actually quite wealthy and also looking to start up his own arms dealing service in David's hometown using some tricks of the industry that he has learned over the years.

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Efraim kind of does whatever he wants and this is clearly shown when one day a small-time drug deal goes bad and Efraim calmly walks to the trunk of his car to procure an automatic assault rifle to sort the situation out. Not long after, Efraim asks David to join him in the industry, and the two long-time friends start to kill it, so to speak.

That's all I am going to tell you about the story. This film is mostly drama, but it has some wonderful comedic moments in it also. I find Jonah Hill's ability to weigh 400 pounds in one film and 190 in the next one to be quite remarkable. I know this is a bit mean, but there is something about Miles Teller's stupid face that bothers me - but he is a fantastic actor. This was true in Whiplash as well. I think this is why I didn't watch this film until a few days ago despite the fact that it was released in 2016.

The film is narrated in parts that would otherwise take too long to explain with live action and some purists find this lazy. I don't mind it because it keeps things moving, which since I use Netflix and have immediate access to 7,000 other movies at any time should this one lull is crucial to me actually finishing a film.

War Dogs stays entertaining the entire way through the movie. The film invokes laughter, excitement, and frustration through the scenarios the two protagonists encounter and for me anyway, i stayed invested in the storyline.

On a scale of "Blech!" to "Wowsers!" I give War Dogs a rating of

Yip-yip-yip!