Jonah Hill, Miles Teller, Ana de Armas, Bradley Cooper. Dir. Todd Phillips, Warner Bros., 2016
Have you seen SCARFACE, TOP GUN, GOODFELLAS, BLOW, BLACKHAWK DOWN, LORD OF WAR, BODY OF LIES, AMERICAN HUSTLE, THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, & THE BIG SHORT?
Yes, of course you have. So have I. Which means we've pretty much seen everything WAR DOGS has going for it. That ought not stop people from seeing it, however. If you steal, steal good stuff, and do something cool with it. Todd Phillips does both in WAR DOGS, a highly entertaining, if not wildly original, comedy-crime thriller from 2016.
Having said that, there isn't much else to say. Jonah Hill plays a more alpha version of his character in WOLF OF WALL STREET, fitting his patented shtik into another character who, if not as morally complex as his job would have him be, entertains me for two hours. When I like actors, they have to work hard to bore me. Jonah Hill has yet to bore me. Miles Teller plays a solid, if unremarkable, straight man and his voiceover narration chews up a great deal of exposition without adding much to the film's quality, the usual fate of movie narration. WAR DOGS feels like the 100th espionage-crime-caper project Cooper's appeared in. He doesn't so much phone it in as appear to be doing a friend a favor and giving a few off days to his latest picture.
Reiterating, none of that matters much. WAR DOGS kept me engaged, laughing, well entertained. It makes an ideal Friday Movie, a stylish genre exercise that may not tell us anything new about our amoral times but confirms they continue, without shoving our faces into the bowl while Todd Phillips repeatedly flushes, my big issue with Scorsese & WOLF OF WALL STREET.
As long as people don't approach WAR DOGS expecting some great insight into our new dark age, it works. It's the bane of my depressive life and the joy of my medicated life, a fun fuckin' movie. I cannot ask more of this Friday night than that.
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