Jonah Hill's bravado compensates for dumbed-down narration in 'War Dogs'
The award for Laziest Major Screenplay of 2016 So Far goes to "War Dogs," a comedy so rife with voice-over narration you could close your eyes and let actor Miles Teller read you the plot, exposition and characters' feelings as if listening to an audiobook.
The screenplay, credited to director Todd Phillips, Jason Smilovic and Stephen Chin, apparently thinks its target audience to be a bit on the slow side, as Teller's narrator David Packouz constantly repeats information we already know and comments on the obvious.
"I lied to her!" David tells us right after he lies to his wife, Iz (Ana de Armas).
Thanks for the news, Dave.
The story David tells us - and tells us and tells us - comes from a 2011 Rolling Stone article written by Guy Lawson about two best buds who improbably become wealthy, twenty-something international arms dealers during the Iraq War.
"They call people like us war dogs!" David chirps, cheerfully explaining the movie title.
As a bland and boring loser, David ekes out a living giving people "therapeutic massages" for $75 a session.
At a funeral, David re-connects with his childhood friend Efraim who offers him a partnership in running guns for the U.S. military by using a little-known website designed to give small companies a share of the war profits.
Jonah Hill, sporting a sleazy 10 o'clock shadow and comically corporeal assets, plays Efraim as a slippery snake-oil-salesman-like capitalist masking a ruthless nature. He also owns the funniest cackle since Tom Hulce played Mozart in "Amadeus."
With a baby on the way (how a drop-dead gorgeous, levelheaded woman like Iz wound up with this guy is never examined), David agrees to partner with his pal, then instantly begins lying to Iz about what he does, where he goes and who he meets.
Call it plain dumb luck or a necessary plot device, but David lands a deal to supply the U.S. with Beretta pistols - until he learns that the army can't accept Italian exports.
So, David and Efraim drive the shipment from Jordan across the Triangle of Death to Baghdad, circumventing the embargo and enabling Shaun Toub to deliver a funny bit about giving their "very safe" trip a 50/50 chance of survival.
Then comes the big enchilada of deals at a huge weapons expo in Las Vegas ("It's like Comic-Con with grenades!" Ephraim explains).
A mysterious weapons dealer (a scuzzy Bradley Cooper) tips the boys off about 136 million rounds of AK-47 ammo waiting to be liberated in an Albanian warehouse.
Cue David's voice-over narrator to repeatedly remind us of how much money he saves on shipping by transferring bullets from heavy wooden crates into light cardboard boxes.
Phillips, on the rebound from the "Hangover" trilogy, directs "War Dogs" without much flair or a point-of-view on the ethics of gun running and the government's insane funding of fighting. He relies on Hill's bold and brash bravado to carry the movie.
That's a tall order in a comedy where the tired song choices are flat, literal and obvious. (Dean Martin's "Ain't That A Kick In The Head" for the Vegas segment? Really? The Who's "Behind Blue Eyes" telling us we don't know what it's like to be the bad man as our heroes get arrested?)
It probably seems clever that "War Dogs" uses its own dialogue as subtitles, such as "If I Wanted You Dead, You'd Already Be Dead."
NBC's spy series "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." did it better, and 52 years earlier.
“War Dogs”
★ ★
Starring: Miles Teller, Jonah Hill, Ana de Armas, Bradley Cooper, Shaun Toub
Directed by: Todd Phillips
Other: A Warner Bros. release. Rated R for drug use, language, sexual references. 114 minutes