War Dogs

There is a specific brand of anxiety that only comes from realizing you are wildly unqualified for the situation you just talked yourself into. I felt it once when I accidentally joined an advanced pottery class having never touched clay; David Packouz feels it when he’s driving a truck full of Berettas through the "Triangle of Death" in Iraq. I watched War Dogs for the third time last Tuesday while eating a bowl of cereal that had gone slightly soggy because I got distracted by a Wikipedia rabbit hole regarding international arms trafficking, and honestly, that’s the exact headspace this movie demands.

The High-Pitched Cackle of Greed

Released in 2016, right on the precipice of a massive global cultural shift, War Dogs feels like the final, cynical exhale of the "Hustle Culture" cinema that defined the early 2010s. It’s the grittier, sweatier cousin to The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), but instead of penny stocks and Quaaludes, we’re dealing with AEY—a two-man operation based out of a massage parlor office that ends up landing a $300 million Pentagon contract.

The heartbeat of this film isn't the plot; it’s Jonah Hill. If Miles Teller is our grounded, ethical-ish anchor as David, Hill’s Efraim Diveroli is a chaotic firestorm in a designer shirt. Jonah Hill does this high-pitched, wheezing laugh that sounds like a tea kettle filled with malice, and it is easily one of the most effective character choices of the last decade. He plays Efraim as a chameleon—a man who becomes whoever he needs to be to close a deal. It’s a performance that captures the terrifying vacuum of the "American Dream" better than most prestige dramas. He’s basically playing a human personification of a predatory payday loan.

Director Todd Phillips was clearly in a transitional period here. He was shaking off the frat-boy energy of The Hangover (2009) and moving toward the grim, Scorsese-indebted nihilism of Joker (2019). You can see the DNA of both in War Dogs. It has the "guys on a road trip" DNA, but the scenery is littered with spent shell casings and the mounting dread of federal prison.

A Hangover with Hollow-Points

Visually, Lawrence Sher—who would go on to do incredible work on Godzilla: King of the Monsters—gives the film a high-contrast, saturated look that makes Miami look like a neon fever dream and Albania look like a concrete purgatory. The "Triangle of Death" sequence is the film’s peak. It’s a masterclass in tension, as our two "heroes" realize that the American military-industrial complex is basically just a very dangerous version of eBay.

One of the things I appreciate most about this drama is its refusal to make the arms trade look "cool" in a traditional sense. Sure, there are private jets and fancy cars, but it’s all built on a foundation of crumbling boxes and counterfeit Chinese ammunition. Bradley Cooper (who also produced) shows up as Henry Girard, a high-level arms dealer who wears glasses that make him look like a terrifying librarian. He represents the "endgame" of David and Efraim’s trajectory—cold, detached, and utterly devoid of humanity. It’s a small role, but Cooper leans into a quiet menace that contrasts perfectly with Hill’s loud-mouthed bravado.

Interestingly, the real-life David Packouz actually has a cameo in the film (he’s the guy playing guitar in the elderly home early on). The production also had to pivot during filming; while the movie portrays them driving through Iraq, the real-life duo never actually did that. That was a creative flourish by Phillips to up the stakes, but the fact that they successfully delivered 100 million rounds of AK-47 ammo to Afghanistan is weird enough that I’ll allow the Hollywood embellishment.

The Slow-Burn Cult of the Arms Dealer

In the years since its release, War Dogs has quietly migrated into the "cult classic" territory of the streaming era. It’s a staple of "underrated" lists because it doesn't fit neatly into one box. It’s too funny to be a straight war drama, but too bleak to be a standard comedy. It captures that 2015-2016 zeitgeist perfectly—a moment where we started to realize that the systems governing the world were significantly more fragile (and absurd) than we had been led to believe.

I often think about Ana de Armas in this movie. This was one of her first major English-speaking roles before she became a powerhouse in Knives Out (2019). As David’s wife, Iz, she’s largely relegated to the "concerned spouse" trope, which is a bit of a waste of her talent. However, her presence adds a necessary layer of domestic stakes to a story that would otherwise be entirely untethered from reality.

This movie is the cinematic equivalent of a guy at a bar telling you a story that sounds 40% fake, but he has the receipts to prove it’s all true. It’s a cynical, energetic, and frequently hilarious look at how the gears of war are greased with the ambitions of people who are just trying to make a buck. It doesn't ask you to like David or Efraim; it just asks you to look at the world that allowed them to exist.

War Dogs isn't a masterpiece, but it’s a damn good time that ages better with every passing year of global instability. It’s a fascinating snapshot of Todd Phillips’ evolution as a filmmaker and features a career-best turn from Jonah Hill. If you’ve skipped this one because you thought it was just Hangover: Kabul, give it a shot. It’s smarter, meaner, and much more relevant than it gets credit for. It’s the perfect "Saturday night on the couch" movie—just maybe don't start googling international gun laws afterward unless you want your targeted ads to get very weird.