Lord Of War - 4 Stars (out of four)
This was one I was looking forward to. It promised an interesting story on an interesting subject (gray market arms trading) with interesting actors (Miles Teller and Jonah Hill), and it delivered in spades. It is ostensibly based on two real 20-something stoners from the Miami Beach area who won a $300 million defense contract to supply arms to US forces by gaming the system. They made a lot of money and then it came crashing down.
Now, for those of you who have seen the superior Nicolas Cage movie Lord Of War, it's basically the same story. An amoral guy who finds cracks in the system and exploits the legal gray areas of a pretty disgusting industry for his personal gain. The Cage movie is better because it's not trying to be funny or edgy. It just is. It has a cynical streak that pervades the whole story, enough to kill a hippie in his tracks. But the sad fact is, the guy exists and fills a need normally done by governments. War Dogs, while it is a drama (and a good one), is trying for a more hip feel. It was directed by Todd Phillips (of The Hangover fame) and it shows. It has the same tone, the same chaotic feel The Hangover had. Add in a very healthy dose of some of the blackest of black humor and another Oscar-worthy performance from Jonah Hill (whose character is a pure sociopath) and you have one of those off-kilter, quirky stories that I love. (I would count Pain And Gain, Pulp Fiction, and Deadpool in this vein). It is not a story for everyone, even though in War Dogs, our (anti)heroes get their comeuppance which makes it more friendly for American audiences. Despite everything, we are very pollyannaish in our attitudes. Evil must be punished or we are left a little empty. Lord of War, on the other hand, does not take the easy way out. In fact, the amoral center gets reinforced as men will continue to kill, and there will always be someone their to fill that compunction, especially when nation states cannot, for whatever reason.
So, War Dogs is ultimately crowd pleasing, but it is the black cynicism of Lord of War that hits me harder. In the end, the characters in War Dogs are punished. They are off the street and rules are tightened as we learn from our mistakes. But, life and fireign policy never wrap up that neatly, and Lord of War ends on that unresolved note. To me, it feels more real. I was massively entertained by both, but I give the edge to reality. The other thing I didn't like about War Dogs is that it continues a disturbing trend I have seen in moviemaking lately, of a creeping moral relativism. In Lord of War, Cage's character is totally amoral, and it makes no attempt to show him as anything other than what he is, a merchant of death. In War Dogs, the movie goes out of its way to portray Teller's character as just a good guy who got caught up in his friend's Svengali charm, which made him rich. Hill's character, as he described on Howard Stern is part of his "Jewish scumbag trilogy" (referring to his Wolf of Wall Street, not sure of the other one). The movie seems to feel it needs to apologize regarding Teller because he was a good kid caught up in a bad situation and goes to great pains to paint him sympatheticly, while I think it is much more honest with Hill, that he was an opportunistic scumbag who didn't care anything about what he does to his friends or his customers. I found the moral handwringing regarding a guy who is essentially profiting handsomely off other people's deaths slightly distasteful. That said, I loved the movie for what it was, but I have to give the edge to the superior Lord of War.
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