War Dogs turns ten this year, and it remains one of the sharpest dark comedies to come out of the mid 2010s. The film follows David Packouz and Efraim Diveroli, two young men in their twenties who exploit a loophole allowing small businesses to bid on federal contracts, and end up winning a $300 million deal to arm American allies in Afghanistan.
Todd Phillips directs, a few years before he'd take a much darker turn with Joker, and the film is based on a 2011 Rolling Stone article by Guy Lawson titled Arms and the Dudes. That journalistic root gives the film's absurdity real weight: the details of the deal, the corner cutting and the eventual unraveling are all drawn from an actual federal investigation.
Miles Teller and Jonah Hill lead as Packouz and Diveroli, with Bradley Cooper turning up as the shadowy arms dealer they get in over their heads with. Hill in particular plays Diveroli with an unpredictability that keeps the film's comedy from ever feeling too comfortable, since you're never quite sure when his character's recklessness is going to catch up with him.
It holds a 62% on Rotten Tomatoes, a number that fits a film that is compelling but a little uneven, torn between genuine satire and crowd pleasing comedy.
A decade on, War Dogs still lands as a story about how far ordinary ambition can curdle when there's real money and real war on the other side of it.
