War Dogs

Todd Phillips’s 2016 film follows two young friends in Miami bidding for army munitions contracts, from Guy Lawson’s 2011 Rolling Stone piece Arms and the Dudes and his book. The real file: in January 2007 the US Army awarded a 298 million dollar munitions contract for the Afghan army and police. The contract barred Chinese-made ammunition, and when the 7.62mm rounds proved to be Chinese the origin was concealed. Efraim Diveroli pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and drew forty-eight months; Packouz, Alexander Podrizki and Diveroli’s company AEY pleaded guilty in 2009 and were sentenced too. The showiest sequences sit outside the documented events. The man sent to Albania was not Packouz but a third friend, Podrizki; the drive through the Triangle of Death never happened, and in reality the Beretta delivery failed and the deal collapsed; the kidnapping and the case of money are invented. The narration leans on Packouz’s voiceover throughout, leaving Diveroli a figure watched from outside. Packouz appears himself, as the man playing guitar at the retirement home. A good fit if you accept the rise cut to a comedy rhythm and will look up which scenes were invented. Not for anyone expecting the film to explain what concealing ammunition origin means: on screen it plays less like a crime than a logistics snag.