WAR DOGS (2016)

Todd Phillips directed this film from his screenplay that he co-wrote with Stephen Chin and Jason Smilovic based on the magazine article and book ARMS AND THE DUDES by Guy Lawson. Since you are dealing with a story that was based on fact but had been highly fictionalized for dramatic purposes you’re never really sure if what you are seeing actually happened. What we know is that two twenty something guys who were small time arms dealers made a 300 million dollar deal with the U.S. government to supply weapons for its troops in Afghanistan and that’s where things started to go wrong. Their supplier, an American on a terrorist watch list sells them weapons from the Chinese, where the U.S. has an embargo on buying weapons from, hence the deception begins. Well cast with Jonah Hill, Miles Teller, Bradley Cooper, Ana de Armas and J.B. Blanc among others, I found it enjoyable and entertaining, though well aware that much of what was being portrayed as fact had been fictionalized.