War Dogs (4/5 Stars)

Miles Teller does not understand why a twenty-something guy like him, who was a physical therapist a few months ago, is making a living running guns for the United States' war in Iraq. It’s like this, Jonah Hill, his childhood friend and current employer explains: Remember little league where at the end of the year they would only give out one trophy to the Most Valuable Player. Then one year a parent complained and so they had to start giving out trophies out to everyone. Even the fat retarded kid got a trophy. Well the Bush-Cheney people fucked up big. When Halliburton got all the big contracts for the Iraq War, all the other mid-range suppliers’ strarted screaming unfair. So now there is this website that anybody and I mean anybody can bid for contracts on and that’s how we are in this business.

“So you’re the fat retarded kid?” asks Miles.

“Dude, I’m the fattest and most retarded kid there is!” exclaims Jonah.

Such is the backdrop for this stranger-than-fiction tale from director Todd Phillips. Phillips, known as a comedy director (Old School, The Hangover) is expanding his creative scope here and make no mistake, although “War Dogs” has a lot of laughs, it is drama, and a very well made one at that.

The screenplay was co-written by Phillips and Steven Chin. Chin has an interesting story. In his young twenties he became interested in doing a story about two young arms runners in Iraq. So he went to Iraq to interview them and get their story rights. This story isn’t exactly about those two guys but Chin’s experiences, and his innate ability to understand the type of person who would go half way across the world on a whim in search of forturne, lends this story the its impressive amount of rich contextual detail.

There is nothing I like more than a story that is told by people who seem to really know what they are talking about. “War Dogs” is that type of movie. When Miles and Jonah (I’m writing this review so late that I have forgotten the names of the main characters) need to solve problems, they need to solve very specific ones. For instance, they have a contract to deliver a certain amount of Remington handguns to  a particular general in Iraq. The Italian legislature has just passed a bill outlawing the selling of arms to Iraq. So Miles and Jonah (under threat of never getting business again if they do not deliver) need to redirect their Italian handguns to Jordan, bribe the local officials, and then personally drive the hand guns through Anbar province to Baghdad.

When I speak of the power of details in strong action storytelling this is a good example. The nitty-gritty down to earth stuff lends suspense to a journey regular action blockbusters can’t deliver even with the help of giant robots and the destruction of entire cities. And you might learn something too like bribable soldiers like Marlboro cigarettes.

At its heart, “War Dogs” in is a story about a small business start-up and has all the hallmarks of the trials and tribulation of a good business tale. It has unpaid subcontractors, personal disputes between partners, the joy of success, and the business deal that goes wrong and then goes really wrong. This movie could maybe have been made about any small business but it says a lot about movies, and storytelling in general, that business movies are generally only about two types of businesses: Drugs and Guns. Businesses are perhaps inherently boring or put another way, if they go well, should be boring and so most businesses in movies generally have outside action to enliven the experience of them. How many times have you seen a movie about a bank robber? And how many times have you seen a movie about a bank manager that operates a bank efficiently and competently? That's my point.

As a member of a two man small business, it was fun for me to see a movie like this with my employer. It felt very right. I mean besides the fact that Jonah, the boss in the movie, is a sociopath. My boss isn’t like that. That's obvious enough. I'm not sure why I even mentioned it.

However, going back to Jonah Hill. He is great in this movie. There are certain actors that can really stretch a performance to hit as many notes as possible and in this movie there is not a scene that Jonah is not doing something interesting or funny in it. It is odd that I need to say this next thing given that he already has two Oscar nominations, but Jonah Hill is a great actor with considerable range. Given his girth, there is really not so many other actors like him that can fully supersede the comedy genre and become full-fledged dramatic actors. But he can do it and I look forward to see him do it for a while in the future. (On an irrelevant note: He has successfully gained back the entirety of the weight he impressively lost over the past couple years. That's too bad. I bet he's really struggling about it.)

Bradley Cooper also shows up as a heavy dramatic presence in this movie. It is a role I haven’t seen him play before but he does a good job at being scary enough. My favorite line, “I am not a bad man, but in my line of business, I sometimes have to ask myself: what would a bad man do?”