Todd Phillips shocked audiences with his dark take on the iconic Batman antagonist Joker. The R-rated, gritty origin tale was inspired by the Martin Scorsese classics Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, and earned significant awards attention that was unusual for a comic book film. Joker received eleven Academy Award nominations, with Joaquin Phoenix taking home the trophy for Best Actor.
It was a surprising move for Phillips, who was previously best known for comedic work including Road Trip, Due Date, and The Hangover trilogy. However, right before tackling the Crown Prince of Crime, Phillips had shown his dramatic capabilities with another film indebted to the cinema of Scorsese. The satirical black comedy War Dogs examined the world of modern arms dealerships in a style similar to Goodfellas and Casino.
War Dogs follows massage therapist David Packouz (Miles Teller), who is struggling to provide for his girlfriend Iz (Ana de Armas) when he learns that she is pregnant. David has a chance encounter with his high school friend Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill), an arms dealer for the U.S. Army who operates the independent company AEY Inc. Efraim offers David a role aiding him amidst the ongoing war in Iraq.
David is opposed to the war itself, but nonetheless helps Efraim provide ammunition and weapons to the Iraqi police in Baghdad and eventually go on a series of misadventures throughout the Triangle of Death. While Efraim shows no signs of acknowledging the human costs of their deal, David struggles with going against his core beliefs. Phillips does a good job acknowledging David’s misgivings, but not absolving him of his crimes. His seven month house arrest following the conspiracy charges is framed as a cruel bit of irony considering the many deaths he was responsible for.
Teller delivers one of the strongest performances of his career, showing David’s gradual realization of his own villainy. Hill continued his string of strong dramatic roles with an eccentric performance as the foul-mouthed, untrustworthy character. Its interesting to see de Armas in this earlier role prior to her acclaimed work in Blade Runner 2049 and Knives Out.
War Dogs is based on a true story, and the real David Packouz has a brief cameo in the film. Phillips and his co-writers Stephen Chin and Jason Smilovic based their screenplay on the Rolling Stone article “Arms and the Dudes” by Guy Lawson. Many of the most unbelievable scenarios in the film actually happened, including David and Efraims’ marijuana-infused misadventures before a meeting with Department of Defense representatives.
However, many of the events in the film were largely fictitious. Bradley Cooper’s character Henry Girard is largely inspired by the Swiss Army arms dealer Heinrich Thomet, but the real Thomet never kidnapped David and Efraim. In fact, most of the danger that David and Packouz experience overseas, including their exploits in the Triangle of Death, were invented entirely for the sake of dramatic tension. The film also changes the characters ages; its implied that Efraim and David were the same age, but in reality David was 19 when they began and Efraim was 23.
Efraim Diveroli was known for his precociousness, a trait that would serve him well — and ultimately betray him — as he tried to scam the American government.
Efraim Diveroli oozed new money from every pore. The cool shirts, the new car, the confident swagger all shouted “easy money.”
He was still a kid and he’d already made a name for himself as a gun runner who crossed the country and amassed a small fortune he loved to flaunt.
Soon, his fortune would grow exponentially and his trade would stretch from Miami to China, Eastern Europe, and war-torn Afghanistan. He had all this — and lost it soon after — before he could legally buy a drink.
This is the true story behind the 2016 film War Dogs — and it’s even more absurd than Hollywood made it seem.
In many ways, Efraim Diveroli’s future path was not a surprise. As a child, he delighted in pushing boundaries and breaking rules — endless pranks, alcohol, marijuana.
“I loved it and went strong on the good herb for the next ten-plus years,” he remembered. And his streak for pushing for greater and greater highs extended from one green into another: money.
And what brought him money was guns. Since he was a teenager, Diveroli had been exposed to arms and munitions while working for his uncle in Los Angeles at Botach Tactical.
The younger Diveroli and his father, Michael Diveroli, ultimately decided to take aim at arms dealing on their own when they realized there were lucrative government contracts to be scooped up. The elder Diveroli incorporated AEY (taken from the initials of the Diveroli children) in 1999. Efraim Diveroli subsequently became an officer at 18 and then president by 19.
Diveroli’s AEY started small by nabbing federal contracts that bigger companies weren’t interested in. He drafted an old friend from synagogue, David Packouz, to help with the complicated contracts, and another childhood pal, Alex Podrizki, took on the on-the-ground operations abroad. The company operated mostly out of a Miami apartment, meaning the overhead was minimal, which made their bids smaller, and this was precisely what the American government wanted.
War Dogs is based on a true story, and the real David Packouz has a brief cameo in the film. Phillips and his co-writers Stephen Chin and Jason Smilovic based their screenplay on the Rolling Stone article “Arms and the Dudes” by Guy Lawson. Many of the most unbelievable scenarios in the film actually happened, including David and Efraims’ marijuana-infused misadventures before a meeting with Department of Defense representatives.
However, many of the events in the film were largely fictitious. Bradley Cooper’s character Henry Girard is largely inspired by the Swiss Army arms dealer Heinrich Thomet, but the real Thomet never kidnapped David and Efraim. In fact, most of the danger that David and Packouz experience overseas, including their exploits in the Triangle of Death, were invented entirely for the sake of dramatic tension. The film also changes the characters ages; its implied that Efraim and David were the same age, but in reality David was 19 when they began and Efraim was 23.
Todd Phillips shocked audiences with his dark take on the iconic Batman antagonist Joker. The R-rated, gritty origin tale was inspired by the Martin Scorsese classics Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, and earned significant awards attention that was unusual for a comic book film. Joker received eleven Academy Award nominations, with Joaquin Phoenix taking home the trophy for Best Actor.
David is opposed to the war itself, but nonetheless helps Efraim provide ammunition and weapons to the Iraqi police in Baghdad and eventually go on a series of misadventures throughout the Triangle of Death. While Efraim shows no signs of acknowledging the human costs of their deal, David struggles with going against his core beliefs. Phillips does a good job acknowledging David’s misgivings, but not absolving him of his crimes. His seven month house arrest following the conspiracy charges is framed as a cruel bit of irony considering the many deaths he was responsible for.
It was a surprising move for Phillips, who was previously best known for comedic work including Road Trip, Due Date, and The Hangover trilogy. However, right before tackling the Crown Prince of Crime, Phillips had shown his dramatic capabilities with another film indebted to the cinema of Scorsese. The satirical black comedy War Dogs examined the world of modern arms dealerships in a style similar to Goodfellas and Casino.
Sitting in the restaurant, Packouz tried to clear his head, cupping a hand over his cellphone to shut out the noise. “Tell the Kyrgyz KGB that ammo needs to get to Afghanistan!” he shouted into the phone. “This contract is part of a vital mission in the global war on terrorism. Tell them that if they fuck with us, they are fucking with the government of the United States of America!”
But there was a catch, the kind of perversity common in the world of arms dealing: Rosoboron had been banned by the State Department for selling nuclear equipment to Iran. The U.S. government wanted Russian ammo, just not from the Russians. AEY couldn’t do business with the firm — at least, not legally. But for gun runners, this kind of legal hurdle was just that — a hurdle to be jumped.
Given the deadline on the contract, there was no time to find another supplier. The Hungarians could fill half the deal, but the ammunition would not be ready for shipment until the fall; the Czechs could fill the entire order, but they wanted $1 million. Any delay would risk losing the entire contract. “The Army was pushing us for the ammo,” says Packouz. “They needed it ASAP.”
Alone in a strange city, Podrizki improvised. He picked up a phone book and found a cardboard-box manufacturer named Kosta Trebicka. The two men met at a bar near the Sky Tower in the center of town. Trebicka was in his late forties, a wiry and intense man with thick worker’s hands. He told Podrizki that he could supply cardboard boxes strong enough to hold the ammunition, as well as the labor to transfer the rounds to new pallets. A week later, Podrizki called to ask if Trebicka could hire enough men to repack 100 million rounds of ammunition by taking them out of metal sardine cans and placing them in cardboard boxes. Trebicka thought the request exceedingly odd. Why go to all that trouble? Podrizki fibbed, saying it was to lighten the load and save money on air freight. After extended haggling with Diveroli back in Miami, Trebicka agreed to do the job for $280,000 and hired a team of men to begin repackaging the rounds.
It didn’t take long for AEY to strike cut-rate deals that vastly improved its profit margin. The nine percent planned for in the original bid was soon pushing toward 25 percent — enough to provide Packouz and Diveroli with nearly $85 million in profits. But even such a jaw-dropping sum didn’t satisfy Diveroli. He scoured FedBizOpps for even more contracts and landed a private deal to import Lithuanian ammo, determined to turn AEY into a multibillion-dollar company.
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