Directed by Todd Phllips, director of Very Bad Trip, War Dogs stars Jonah Hill and Miles Teller, the revelation of Whiplash; and tells the story of two childhood friends who engage in arms trafficking during the Iraq war. Of course things will not be easy in this funny and rhythmic adventure.
A wobbly American dream?
Todd Phillips has moved away from the basic American comedy that animated the first part of his career (Very Bad Trip, Deadline, Starsky and Hutch) in an attempt to interfere in a past and present political-social problem. The film, inspired by a true story, goes back a decade to the time of the Iraq war. The character of Jonah Hill will drag his childhood friend played by Miles Teller into more or less legal shenanigans, since drawn from a bureaucratic flaw of Uncle Sam.War Dogs mixes genres and sometimes struggles to find his style, comedy, adventure film, drama, scam film, Todd Phillips wants to have a wide angle of attack and touch all the potentials of this story. Unfortunately wanting too much to play on different fronts Todd Phillips sometimes forgets the purpose of his film: to make a pamphlet against Uncle Sam. Like Michael Bay's No Pain, No Gain, or the recent The Big Short, War Dogs is a totally hallucinating story, very unexpected, which features ordinary individuals who will take advantage of the system to achieve their own American dream. In a few months the character of Miles Teller goes from masseur for rich owners to rich owner himself. And as with the films mentioned above, the viewer simply tends to forget that War Dogs is inspired by a true story. Todd Phillips reuses Jonah Hill quite close to his character in The Wolf of Wall Street, an individual blinded by greed, ostentatious and unreliable. But War Dogs contains some major flaws in its themes that it sometimes oversimplifies.
Decent entertainment at most
War Dogs doesn't push its themes far enough. Where he could have largely turned to satirical comedy, he is content to follow the usual paths traced by the all-comers of Hollywood. Risk-taking is minimal and the government will not have to feel worried by Todd Phillips' analysis. The way in which the two cronies scam the government remains rather unclear, and the latter takes only minimal criticism of its questionable behavior of accepting a contract from a fictitious company formed by the protagonists. Todd Phillips did not dwell on how the government turns a blind eye to this kind of contract to make the maximum profit without asking too many questions about the origin of the services offered by the two individuals. As for the characters, they are not the big villains of the story, Todd Phillips manages to create a real empathy towards them and the viewer can not help but be on the side of the fraudsters.However, other themes work perfectly.The chemistry between Hill and Teller is thus fluid, the two friends interpreting endearing characters with whom we identify. Turning in this way in the buddy movie, the characters find themselves in contradiction and manage despite this, to transform their business into a juicy association. In addition, the film succeeds in drawing a perfect picture of the ravages of business on friendship.Todd Phillips thus comes to oppose loyalty and respect to betrayal and greed and comes to question human friendship when confronted with a few million dollars. Proof of this observation: the character of Jonah Hill, absolutely ready for anything and who comes to make sacred manipulations with regard to his associates.A real opposition between good and evil intervenes, but not at the level of social arguments, not at the level of scams against a rotten government, but on a human scale, on the scale of friendship supposed to be unshakeable. References to Scarface are numerous and coincide with the evolution of Jonah Hill's character. But this beautiful alchemy is also convincing thanks to the duo of actors. Even if Jonah Hill sometimes does a little too much with his character, the pleasure is there.As for Milles Teller, his sober game suits this hesitant, moral and conscientious man perfectly. Icing on the cake, we will note an unexpected appearance of Bradley Cooper that gives a smile. But finally the ambition of Todd Phillips has been revised downwards and War Dogs is only an average entertainment. Well edited, well done with an uninhibited staging, made of chapters materialized by sentences written on the fly on a black background, supported by a very appreciable soundtrack, War Dogs fulfills its specifications without problem: the film is funny, rhythmic, taking and despite some lengths rather exciting.
War Dogs is certainly Todd Phillips' most sought-after comedy compared to his previous achievements. He pays for the presence of a duo of talented actors to interpret characters ready to challenge the system in a funny and sometimes relevant context. Without being a masterpiece War Dogs is therefore a relative pleasant surprise that spoils a real potential by dint of wanting to stay too much in the mold.