Has a movie about arms dealers living it up as arms dealers looked this fun since Nicolas Cage and Jared Leto teamed up for Lord of War? This time around, in War Dogs, it's Jonah Hill and Miles Teller—who's coming off one of the worst films of 2015—doing the gun slinging in the film's first trailer. Oh, and Bradley Cooper shows up at one point at a blackjack table.
The official synopsis of the film says it's the "true story of two young men, David Packouz and Efraim Diveroli, who won a $300 million contract from the Pentagon to arm America's allies in Afghanistan," but let's take a step back from that and just say there's something about watching dudes smuggle fat stacks of cash, shoot guns into the air, snort cocaine and make what appear to be increasingly bad decisions that makes a movie look very enticing.
There's also nothing like turning Jonah Hill loose to talk some s--t, and he definitely gets to do it here, like when he cuts in line to board and airplane, telling a group of Arab men and women, "Don't worry, I have to go first. I'm American." Teller plays a character who was previously a licensed massage therapist before becoming a gun runner for the government.
The film, based on a Rolling Stone article by Guy Lawson that was later expanded into his book Arms and the Dudes, thankfully had its title changed to War Dogs. At one point, The Wrap reported Jesse Eisenberg and Shia LaBeouf were rumored to be circling the roles that eventually went to Teller and Hill, which seems like a pretty big shift considering how much this role feels like a Jonah Hill role going by the trailer.
War Dogs will be out in theaters Aug. 19.
