(Credits: Warner Bros. Pictures)

War Dogs is a crime caper that comes out all guns blazing. Literally, in this case, as Jonah Hill and Miles Teller play amateur arms dealers brave Iraq’s notorious “Triangle of Death” to hawk their wares to the local police force, in the most recent comedy movie of director Todd Phillips’ career.

The Hangover might evoke nostalgia among certain demographics for “bro” comedies gone by, and undoubtedly has its hilarious moments. But it’s the kind of lowest-common-denominator fare that feels a far cry from Phillips’ darkly subversive anti-comic book origin story Joker. War Dogs bridges that gap, with tonal elements from both films.

Hill is at his best, suitably unhinged in his go-to on screen persona as a loose cannon, while Teller brings the same boyish naivety that worked so well in Whiplash, and Ana de Armas just about gets through her lines in her first English-language performance. There’s enough gravitas in there to add a genuine sense of peril to the comedy as well, not least because Teller and Hill are playing real-life wannabe arms dealers David Packouz and Efraim Diveroli.

After surviving their ordeal in Iraq and leaving with large wads of cash, Packouz and Diveroli aim for an even bigger cut of the United States war chest in Afghanistan. They meet war criminal Henry Gerard, “a legend among arms dealers” on a US terrorist watchlist, who offers to be their “one supplier who could fill the entire Afghan deal.” He soon embroils them in an illegal deal repackaging contraband Chinese-manufactured ammo in Albania, for which he charges them four times the wholesale value.

Diveroli then tries to cut Gerard out of the supply chain altogether, and Packouz threatens to leave the deal if he does. Ironically, Packouz is the one bundled into the boot of a car, beaten and threatened with a gun by Gerard because of Diveroli’s actions. “Did you really think you could cut me out of my own deal?” Gerard asks, as Packouz stares down the barrel.

So why does Gerard give Packouz money?

This proves to be the final straw, as Packouz goes to Diveroli and tells him, “I want out.” His business partner tries to stop him walking away, though, and the two of them openly discuss the illegal activity they’ve engaged in as their main investor Ralph Slutzky sits listening. It turns out Slutzky is wearing a wire, and he brings the whole operation down, sending Diveroli to jail. Packouz gets off with seven months under house arrest, as he cooperates with an FBI investigation.

In the movie’s final scene, he’s visited by Gerard, and assumes he’s about to get whacked. Gerard claims he’s only there to “apologise”, however, and appears to have gotten out of the federal investigation unscathed. “I appreciate you leaving my name out of your testimony,” he tells Packouz. When Packouz asks him if he killed his driver in Albania, Gerard opens a briefcase full of money. “No more questions,” he says.

The briefcase is to buy Packouz’s silence indefinitely, both about Gerard’s role in the illegal arms sale and his killing of the Albanian driver. According to the real David Packouz, this scene didn’t really happen, and he never received a dollar for his troubles. “Man, I wish that was true,” he told Matthew Cox’s True Crime Podcast. Yet if it were, he almost certainly wouldn’t be a free man giving free-to-air interviews to podcasters.