Guns, money! Money, guns!
BQB here with a review of “War Dogs.”
David Packouz (Miles Teller) is a young man in his twenties, facing a problem that many young men face, that of money. It makes the world go round and without it, his world is barely turning. He’s a massage therapist, barely making ends meet while he deals with old men who expect him to rub their disgusting rear ends. Worse, he’s trying to become a bed sheet salesman, but no one will buy what he’s selling.
Enter David’s old high school friend Efraim Diveroli. Efraim’s started a small business, buying and supplying small amounts of guns, ammunition, supplies to the U.S. military during the Iraq War.
Out of a desire to keep the bidding process open, the government has a website that provides details for all manner of government war related purchasing contracts and if this movie is to believed, any old schmuck off the street can bid and win and make moolah, assuming he can provide what the government is looking for.
Efraim and David become partners and at first, it would seem, legit entrepreneurs who are making dough off of a solid business idea. Alas, as you might expect, they get greedy, taking on bigger contracts they have no business getting involved in, and digging themselves deeper and deeper into an international world of gun running corruption in order to obtain the goods they need to fulfill the contract.
Shady characters, crooked third world businessmen and even mobsters are all faced by these two Miami dudes who are just trying to live the American dream. Ironically, the movie even suggests that the U.S. government may be semi-aware of some of the practices their bidders are involved in, i.e. if you ask for a larger than usual amount of an item, you must sort of know that whoever provides it is doing so illegitimately.
But there’s the rub. It’s a don’t ask, don’t tell world. The government doesn’t ask how they get the stuff and the dudes don’t tell. In the process, they make mad cash, but are the profits worth it? Will they survive?
I gotta be honest, I didn’t expect a lot out of this one. The trailers seemed like it was going to be a preach fest about the ills of the Iraq War. While we can debate ad nauseum over the pros and cons (mostly cons) of that war, that’s the whole point. Like most Americans, I’m tired of hearing about it. The war has been USA’s been long itch case of crotch rot for years so while I’m not saying important people shouldn’t still be discussing it, I just didn’t know if I had it in me to devote two hours to re-hashing it.
Truth be told, it’s a modern day rags to riches cautionary tale, reinforcing that old adage that if it’s too good to be true, it probably is. Like any story where ordinary dudes rise up by doing unsavory deeds, you root for the dudes at first, until they start crossing lines and then not so much.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy.
Bookshelf Battle 