Stream It Or Skip It: ‘War Dogs’ on Netflix, Where Jonah Hill and Miles Teller Become International Arms Dealers Overnight

In War Dogs (Netflix), two twentysomething dorks cut into the international arms trade through a back door, and their business goes ballistic pretty damn quick. Ready or not, the business of war is calling, and they put good decisions in life and work on hold in search of greed and greenbacks.

WAR DOGS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Childhood pals David Packouz (Miles Teller) and Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill) randomly reconnect in 2005 Miami and horn their way into the international arms trade, enabled by an open bidding system on US military weapons contracts, a thriving marketplace for mayhem called the Iraq War, and their own unflagging desire to achieve the American dream. Before he runs into Efraim at the funeral of a mutual acquaintance, David is a massage therapist and struggling entrepreneur. But almost before he knows what’s happening, he’s sitting in Efraim’s new office, ripping bong hits while wearing mil-spec NVGs as a subway-sized poster of Al Pacino in Scarface looms over his shoulder.

David’s old buddy shows him an online doomscroll of biddable contracts — “it’s like EBay, but for war” — and with Efraim’s big talk and and ethical elasticity out front, the two exploit that leaky government procurement process to secure lucrative contracts supplying the military with guns, ammunition, grenades, and all manner of small arms. As the easy money rolls Efraim and David’s way, War Dogs takes on the trappings of Entourage-style bro dream, all aspirational gleam and montages of smoking joints all the way to the bank. This is a Todd Phillips operation, after all, and it sticks to the foul-mouthed, vaguely aggro bad behavior vibe the writer and director established with Old School and the Hangover films.

As the contracts and opportunities to convert them into bigger and bigger payouts pile up, David and Efraim are more than happy to cut basic corners. You know, like keeping legitimate business records. And David compromises his relationship with girlfriend Iz (Ana de Armas), lying about trips to the dicey locales where the arms trade thrives. Jordan. Iraq. Albania. And finally, when the biggest arms contract of them all floats before their eyes (courtesy of a shady arms world heavyweight played by Bradley Cooper in what amounts to a cameo) David and Efraim will put everything on the line, including their partnership, in a play for a fully weaponized profit margin.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? With its still frame edit drops and frequent stretches of voiceover narration, War Dogs riffs on Scorsese even as it echoes Phillips’ own work with the Hangover series, presenting the risk of bodily harm from risible characters as fodder for bro-down arrogance. Meanwhile, 2005’s Lord of War paired Nicolas Cage with Jared Leto as emotionally broken arms-dealing brothers.

Performance Worth Watching: Jonah Hill makes Efraim Diveroli the kid whose version of congeniality is abrasive, obnoxious, and pretty obviously transparent, but just genuine enough to be magnetic. Outwardly a loudmouth who lives even louder, Hill is also sure to convey how truly empty Diveroli is at his core. He gloats, grovels, spits garrulous game, and shits on relationships — whatever it takes to convert on a deal. And all of it is couched in a nasally, dismissive guffaw.

Memorable Dialogue: “David, we’re gunrunners. Let’s go run some fucking guns.” Efraim sees the binary at work in getting their crates of handguns to their destination, even if it means bucking through a war zone on a dark, diesel-choked desert highway. David is more wary, but can understand it in the macro. “It was fucking surreal,” he says in voiceover. “Six months ago I was a massage therapist in Miami Beach. Now, here I was, driving a truckload of guns through Iraq with my best friend from junior high.”

Sex and Skin: None. Lots of cussing and the ingestion of intoxicants, though.

Our Take: As the wide-eyed newcomer to Efraim’s scheming arms dealing, David asks questions for the audience, which often boil down to wondering out loud why any government body or mysterious foreign military concern would choose to do business with a tiny company run by two idiots in their 20s. The answer, invariably, is money. “War is an economy,” David tells us in VO, and when he and Efraim offer a low-ball bid on a boffo contract for 7.62 ammunition, the military purchasing agents can’t resist the savings opportunity. In War Dogs, everybody is chasing cash, and the moral relevance of what’s on the other side of the gun barrel doesn’t figure into the balance sheet. The film’s stance seems to be that, since warmaking long ago corrupted the entire world, one might as well get what there is to be gotten. But by the time these two have gotten it, we don’t really care about what physical and moral cost they might pay, and the montages of blowing coke rails and blasting away with a grey market AK blend together into a bland stream of stimulus.

Our Call: STREAM IT. For all its flirting with the stigma of modern warfare’s commoditization and government bodies buying bullets from the lowest bidder, War Dogs operates largely without a conscience. But it’s already calculated that you’ll go along for the ride.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges

Watch War Dogs on Netflix