2016’s War Dogs is loosely based on real events but, one imagines, so loosely that anything resembling fact has been lost along the way. It is a vaguely entertaining 114 minutes but largely forgettable once the end credits roll.
Jonah Hill stands out for a larger than life performance, playing the less likeable of two fairly unlikeable protagonists but even he can’t make this much more than a run-of-the-mill movie that I wouldn’t particularly go out of my way to watch again.
Score for Christmasishness
Overall the movie isn’t very Christmassy, but Christmas does feature a bit, including a fairly grim Christmas Day for one of the protagonists in Albania, which is followed by an even grimmer New Year’s Day. Christmas does feel relevant to the narrative at that point in the film and there are lots of visual reminders of the season on screen for a good five minutes of the running time. Other movies have made my annual countdown for more spurious reasons so War Dogs deserves to be considered a bit Christmas(ish) according to the tenuous criteria I use to make my yearly list.
James Proclaims! 