War Dogs

There are some movies which work better as two minute trailers than they do as actual films. War Dogs is one of those films. For the trailer was admittedly, pretty energetic, and sold the film about as effectively as was possible. The problem is once you've seen it, the actual movie that is, you realize the trailer already told you the story and all the film did was fill in some of the more wonky," in the weeds" type details. Don't get me wrong, the outlandish nature of this true story is certainly worth telling, but the trailer already did the telling, and all the audience really need do to get the remaining picture is to read those little blurbs at the end that reveal the fate of the characters. Hill is a terrific sleaze, with a laugh reminiscent of Amadeus but sleazier, and Teller is a somewhat sympathetic leading man, but they don't have much of a film to work with. Just a snappy trailer and a too crazy to believe true story that works better as a bar anecdote, or as a scrawl on cable news, than as a feature length motion picture.