6.9 | / 10 |
Users | 2.6 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 2.9 |
Two arms dealers, David Packouz and Efraim Diveroli, secure a $300 million government contract to supply weapons for US allies in Afghanistan. They soon find themselves in danger abroad and in trouble back home.
Starring: Jonah Hill, Miles Teller, Ana de Armas, Kevin Pollak, Bradley CooperCrime | 100% |
Dark humor | 64% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Comedy | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
French (Canada): Dolby Digital 5.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
Portuguese: Dolby Digital 5.1
English: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
English DD=audio descriptive
English SDH, French, Portuguese, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
UV digital copy
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
In 1983, Oscar-winning director William Friedkin attempted a satire of the global arms trade
with Deal of the Century. Despite a superior cast and an
intriguing script, the film floundered, in part because Friedkin struggled to find a consistent tone but also because he cast Chevy Chase as
the story's protagonist, a small-timer trying to bluff his way into the upper echelons of a multi-billion dollar industry. Audiences weren't prepared to
accept a performer best known for smirks and pratfalls in the role of a morally conflicted hustler.
Over three decades later, director Todd Phillips has taken another run at the same subject with
better results. War Dogs was marketed as a comedy, probably on the strength of Phillips'
reputation as the director of The Hangover
trilogy (not to mention a career of silliness extending
back through Old School and
Road Trip), but the film's humor is the cynical variety that
inspires knowing grins rather than belly laughs. In what turns out to be a surprisingly dark account of
ambition gone wrong, Phillips proves adept at walking the fine line between mockery and
cautionary tale. It helps that he's working from a (more or less) true story.
War Dogs was shot digitally (on the Arri Alexa RT Plus, according to IMDb) by Lawrence Sher, the cinematographer on Phillips' Hangover trilogy, who brings a similar photographic style to this film but also gets the opportunity to deploy different palettes in a wide variety of locales. The Miami scenes are brightly lit and dominated by cool blues and whites; scenes set in the Mideast reflect the yellow and gold of sun and sand; Albania (shot in Romania) has a grungy grayish-blue cast over everything; and Vegas is, of course, Vegas. Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray reflects the usual virtues of polished digital capture, with good (and often excellent) detail, sharp contrast and an absence of aliasing, artifacts or banding. The average bitrate of 29.37 Mbps continues a welcome trend from Warner's theatrical group toward the more generous compression that is routine on discs from its corporate cousin, the Warner Archive Collection.
For a film about the arms trade, War Dogs' lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack is surprisingly
light on high-octane sound effects. A semi-comical sequence in Fallujah briefly pits the U.S.
military's heavy artillery against insurgents, but otherwise the film's gunfire is limited to target
practice and weapons tests (and, in one instance, an ill-considered display of force against a
group of Miami weed dealers). But while the effects aren't especially loud, the sound editing is
first-rate, supplying immersive sonic signatures for the film's various environments, from the
sedate Miami offices, apartments and diners where the AEY partners ply their trade to the
rougher locales in the Mideast and Albania, where the heavy lifting occurs. Dialogue is clearly
rendered and properly prioritized, with David's narration lifted above the action.
The incidental music is by Cliff Martinez, who has scored numerous films for Steven Soderbergh
and Nicolas Winding Refn, but the film's most memorable musical interludes are derived from
an eclectic playlist drawn from multiple time periods. Phillips has been quoted as saying that "[t]he
right music can sometimes do five pages of scripted dialogue", and War Dogs makes effective
use of songs from Blue Oyster Cult ("Don't Fear the Reaper"), The Who ("Behind Blue Eyes"),
Vanilla Fudge ("You Keep Me Hangin' On"), Dean Martin ("Ain't That a Kick in the Head")
and many more. Even the elevator music has been carefully chosen. During a critical scene, the
generic muzak gradually breaks through the conversation to reveal an instrumental version of Jim
Croce's "Time in a Bottle", which, in the context of the scene, is either a wistful comment or a
sick joke (probably both).
The slim extras are mostly promotional, except for "Pentagon Pie", which is just plain weird.
There's plenty of political subtext in War Dogs, if one wants to look for it, but it's equally
enjoyable as a (sorta) true shaggy dog story about misguided initiative—Horatio Alger meets
P.T. Barnum by way of Guns & Ammo. Warner's Blu-ray is light on extras but technically
superior. Recommended.
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