CHICAGO – Excelsior! Comic book legend Stan Lee’s famous exclamation puts a fine point on the third and final play of Mark Pracht’s FOUR COLOR TRILOGY, “The House of Ideas,” presented by and staged at City Lit Theater in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood. For tickets/details, click HOUSE OF IDEAS.
Film Review: ‘War Dogs’ Fires Blanks in a Sorry Attempt at Satire
CHICAGO – “War Dogs” is an insufferable, self important, and heavy handed attempt at satire that can’t stop congratulating itself for all the big truths it’s blowing up, bro. “Old School” and “Hangover” director Todd Phillips fancies himself an auteur, but here it seems like he’s imitating David O Russell imitating Martin Scorsese.
Rating: 1.5/5.0 |
He’s picked a subject ripe for satire. Inspired by the true story, David (Miles Teller) and Efraim (Jonah Hill) play a couple of old high school friends in Miami who reconnect at a friend’s funeral during the early oughts in the middle of the Afghan and Iraq wars. David is struggling just to get by as a massage therapist with a wife and a baby on the way, while Efraim has found a way to make easy cash by exploiting the bureaucracy of the military.
Efraim bids on small military contracts for things like night vision goggles or body armor, that the big defense contractors don’t bother with. He’s strictly a middle man making a good living off the crumbs left behind – but he’s got big plans to score a relatively big contract, and he brings David in on the operation. Together they become international arms dealers while barely leaving their office.
Miles Teller and Jonah Hill in ‘War Dogs’
Photo credit: Warner Bros.