‘War Dogs’ review: Arms dealers Jonah Hill, Miles Teller shoot low

So this is weird: Vocally, Jonah Hill and Miles Teller are eerily alike, even though they’re completely different physical types. If “War Dogs” were more interesting, funnier, wilder, something, anything, this wouldn’t warrant a mention. But director and co-writer Todd Phillips’ flat, enervated movie, based on a 2011 Rolling Stone story about a couple of Miami pals who stumbled into the wonderful world of international arms-dealing, gives you all too much time to focus on things like the actors’ speaking voices.

The energy seeps out of scene after scene, no matter how aggressively the “Hangover” director tries to Scorsese his way through the material. What does it mean to “Scorsese”? The verb “Scorsese” means indiscriminate numbers of “GoodFellas”-type freeze frames, while our narrator voice-overs another round of exposition. It means wallowing in seductive, lethal excess and morally challenged endeavors of moneymaking for the cinematic joy of it.

“War Dogs” tries. A 2008 prologue reveals David Packouz (Teller) at the wrong end of a pistol somewhere in Albania. How did he get there? Flashback to 2005. At a schoolmate’s funeral in Miami, David reunites with his troublemaking high school friend Efraim Diveroli (Hill). Efraim used to buy and sell firearms online. Now, though, he specializes: “I only sell to one gun nut: the U.S. military.”

The movie follows a familiar blueprint of seduction, one wolf indoctrinating another into the world of high-risk riches. First the boys scrounge for low-level U.S. government contracts, profitably supplying America’s fighting forces (and the Iraqi police) with pistols. Their makeshift company’s lowball bids prove successful. Then, the mother lode: a contract supplying the Afghan military with 100 million rounds of AK-47 ammo, a deal requiring a shady middleman (Bradley Cooper) but worth tens of millions.

The movie promises rollicking bromance with a chase of moral reckoning, but “War Dogs” doesn’t have the nerve or the filmmaking acumen to challenge the audience. It coasts on an easygoing highway of cynicism regarding how America conducts its business of war. Despite all the Scorsese-ing, we’re left with virtually nothing, except the feeling that a pretty good anecdote has been inflated into a bubbleheaded American dream morality tale.