Similar to The Wolf of Wall Street, War Dogs spins the heavily narrated rags-to-riches story of Hill and Miles Teller, a pair of badly tanned sociopathic dirtbags who make it big running guns via a dodgy Pentagon procurement website. If that sounds a bit like 2005’s arms trade fable Lord of War (from back when Nicolas Cage and Jared Leto were approximately 9,000 percent less crazy), well, those d-bags were Russian and fictional, and these d-bags are Floridians and not. So... that’s something. Director Todd Phillips (Old School) has reliable comic timing and a good eye, but he’s throwing himself at some weighty topics. The film suffers by comparison to both Wolf and Lord, which were better at blending human drama and problematic behavior with fairly complex issues like dubious international finance and the economic practicalities of modern warfare. by Ben Coleman