Insider’s view of the arms racket is no Goodfellas

War Dogs 15 cert, 114 min

Dir Todd Phillips Starring Miles Teller, Jonah Hill, Ana de Armas, Kevin Pollak, Patrick St. Esprit, Bradley Cooper In a way, War Dogs is all Goodfellas’ fault. Back in 1990, Martin Scorsese’s swaggering mob opera inspired a crime movie subgenre you might call the fleece procedural: wild-but-true stories of real-world scams and cons, gleefully narrated by a key participant. It’s proven fertile ground for directors as varied as David O. Russell ( American Hustle) and Adam McKay ( The Big Short) and, in every frame, you sense The Hangover director thinks he’s found his Goodfellas – or at least, his Big Short.

It’s a black comic drama about two backslapping bros who wade into the international arms dealing racket and soon find themselves sunk up to their double chins.

It’s narrated by Miles Teller, playing David Packouz, who reconnects with an arrogant former school pal, Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill), at a mutual friend’s funeral.

Efraim is making a small fortune fulfilling minor defence contracts for the US government and offers David a slice of the pie. The inevitable carnage that follows – kidnappings in Albania, armed pursuits across the Iraqi desert – is all related in voice-over, with all the other Scorsese-aping tricks in situ.

But the satire hits with powder-puff force thanks largely to the ruinous lack of moral shading around the pair’s exploits.

The big ethical takeaways are as blunt as ‘While everyone’s making money, don’t be greedy’: no match for the conscience-racking, moral-compass-spinning schadenfreude of The Wolf of Wall Street. RC