War is big business and it’s about to get a full frontal of that reality in the new biographical comedy, War Dogs, slicing open the belly of the beast and possibly providing a few giggles along the path to arms enlightenment. With Jonah Hill (Hail, Caesar!) and Bradley Cooper (Guardians Of The Galaxy 2) heading up the cast, and Todd Phillips in the director’s chair it’s shaping up to be something like a Super Bad, The Hangover and American Sniper mashup.
You can check out the trailer below, but the craziest part of it all is that it’s based on a true story, a bit like The Big Short, but instead of sub-prime mortgages being the lynch pin, it’s sub-machine guns, rocket launchers and Iraqi triangles of death. Real life movie adaptations seem to require a little sexing up for the big screen, and from the look of the trailer, it would appear to be the case here too with drugs and strippers taking up some of the big screen time, but then maybe this is just a reflection of the reality of the situation, compared to the shameless brass tacks of Margot Robbie explaining the housing market bubble from the comfort of a pento bubble bath.
Release date
War Dogs has a UK release date of Friday the 26th August 2016, just a week later than the US release on the 19th August. It arrives in the UK on the same weekend as Bad Moms, Cell, Kids In Love and Mechanic: Resurrection, so there’s no massive box office competition for it to compete with, although, with David Brent: Life On The Road out the week before it won’t be an entirely even playing field for the film.
Story
Efraim Divoroli (Hill) and David Packous (Miles Teller) are the eponymous war dogs – people that make money from war without serving in them – and when their low bid for a $300 million Pentagon arms deal comes through they’re left with the challenge of making it stick. The twenty-something newbies had previously been cashing in the high-life in Miami on much smaller deals for the Iraq War, but the scope of their big payoff means they have to stoop a whole lot lower than they ever thought possible.
The deal is to arm the Afghan army, which sees them travelling to the war-torn country in a bid to fulfill the massive contract. However, they’re forced to be in business with much shadier individuals, testing their ingenuity, as well as the flexibility of their scruples, and as you can see from the trailer below it’s going to get pretty bumpy before all of the money changes hands.
Cast
Bradley Cooper plays alongside Miles Teller (The Fantastic Four (2015)) and Jonah Hill as what looks like a senior figure from the Afghan military, which looks a bit odd to say the least. The cast also includes Ana de Armas, who has been touted as also featuring in the 2017 Blade Runner sequel.
Production
In addition to directing the film, Todd Phillips also co-wrote the screenplay with Stephen Chin and Jason Smilivic, using the Rolling Stones article, “Arms And The Dudes” by Guy Lawson as the framework for the story. Phillips is one of the producers along with Bradley Cooper and Mark Gordon, while David Siegel and Bryan Zuriff and the executive producers. Lawrence Sher is the director of photography and Jeff Groth is the editor for the film.
The production has been awarded a 15 certificate by the BBFC in the UK.
First impressions
While it looks like the intention is sort of to make a Hangover-style take on war, which sounds a bit Widow Twankey from where we’re sitting, the fact that the film will be shining a light on the relationship between big business and war makes it incredibly relevant, whether it’s wholly intentional or not. The reality is that many people make their fortune from the implements of war, which are almost exclusively designed to kill, maim or demoralise the opposition and if there’s even a little flicker of exposition in and among the comedy of War Dogs then it will have done a pretty good job of showing just how ridiculous, thoughtless and antiquated modern warfare remains.
You can read more about the real life story behind the film in the New York Times articles, blowing the whole situation wide open.
