Miles Teller and Jonah Hill (Warner Bros. Pictures)

Todd Phillips, director of frat-boy comedies like Old School and The Hangover movies, could never be accused of sensitivity. Even if his latest film is based on a true story, the premise smacks of Hangover IV. Yet as a study of buddies gone bad, War Dogs is at its core a story of friendship and the military-industrial complex. I never thought I’d say this of a Todd Phillips joint: the director is better than the script.

David Packouz (Miles Teller) is floundering as a massage therapist in Miami. With his girlfriend (Ana de Armas) pregnant, he needs money fast, and after reconnecting with an old school chum at a funeral, he goes into business with small-time arms dealer Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill) to form what becomes a huge company, AEY (which turns out to be a meaningless acronym).

War Dogs is based on the true story of twenty-something arms dealers who land a huge Pentagon contract to provide weapons for the Afghan army. The script by Phillips, Stephen Chin, and Jason Smilovic takes some liberties with the story first reported by Guy Lawson in Rolling Stone, and Hill looks nothing like the real Diveroli.

The movie ultimately comes off as a dim step-child to The Big Short and The Wolf of Wall Street, but it’s shortcomings are due less to its bromance than to lazy details, as when David very carefully places an important and sensitive contract in a place where everyone can see it.

What makes it work, for the most part, is the relationship between its leads. Teller has played the obnoxious bro in movies like 21 and Over (which I still believe paid strange homage to artist Ai Weiwei), but for now, his bad boy still pulls off a kind of vulnerability. Which is something you’d never say of Hill, whose roles are often a variation on the same obnoxious boor. But there’s a reason Hill is a two-time Oscar nominee; he’s a frat-boy Falstaff with a sinister edge, able to speak volumes in a simple, insincere laugh that recurs throughout War Dogs. Teller and Hill have a buddy chemistry that at times suggests a frathouse Henry IV, where Hal’s struggle is not to put away childish things but to steer clear from dangerous adult things like Ak-47 ammo..

At a key moment, David and Efraim run across the beach for a hug after they learn they’ve landed the contract of a lifetime. As they celebrate in slow motion, Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” plays on the soundtrack, and the tone is unmistakable: they’re celebrating the very thing that will lead to their downfall. The movie loses steam in its final act; and never plumbs the depths of behavior that we see in the Hangover movies or even The Wolf of Wall Street. These dogs bark worse than they bite, but War Dogs makes you wonder what Phillips might be able to accomplish if he ever made a movie about adults.

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War Dogs
Directed by Todd Phillips
Written by Stephen Chin, Todd Phillips and Jason Smilovic
R Rated R for language throughout, drug use and some sexual references
114 minutes
Opens today at a multiplex near you.

With Miles Teller, Jonah Hill, Ana de Armas
Rated R for language throughout, drug use and some sexual references