Film reviews round-up: War Dogs, Cell, and The Purge: Election Year

College dropouts-turned-arms dealers, a new Purge film, and a Stephen King zombie flick

War Dogs

★★★☆☆

Dir: Todd Phillips, 120 mins, starring Jonah Hill, Miles Teller, Ana De Amas, Bradley Cooper

War Dogs are the “bottom feeders” in the international arms business who, thanks to tweaks in the law during the George W Bush era, were able to make fortunes by supplying weapons to the Pentagon.

Two of these opportunists are twentysomething college dropout David (Miles Teller) and his unscrupulous childhood friend Ephraim (Jonah Hill). From their base in Miami, using website FedBizOpps (an “eBay for war”, as it is characterised) they somehow land a contract to supply berettas to the US army in Baghdad.

The film, adapted from a Rolling Stone article, is based on a true story. You can see what writer-director Phillips is trying to achieve here. He wants to make a movie with the same grandiose sweep as Lord Of War (in which Nicolas Cage played an arms dealer) and with the hedonistic excess that characterised The Wolf Of Wall Street or his own Hangover comedies. The problem is that the material is too sketchy to support such a vision.

There is certainly comic value in the way the two weed-smoking Miami-based friends somehow turn themselves briefly into “players” in the international arms business. Phillips tells their story with plenty of gonzo-style zest. The friends make a hair-raising foray to Baghdad via Jordan to ensure one consignment of guns is delivered to its purchaser and also travel to Albania to find supplies for another massive order. Hill is in rambunctious form as the obnoxious entrepreneur who has chutzpah in droves.

Teller's character is supposedly anti-war but, with a pregnant girlfriend and a dead-end job as a male masseuse, he is very quick to swallow his scruples. Neither has the remotest interest in any of the political or moral questions that their unsavoury business raise. They don't even bother to pay their Albanian workers. They're out for money and excitement. Just occasionally, for example when David is beaten up by Albanian gangsters, real life violence intrudes but, generally, arms dealing here is portrayed as a lark - the perfect gap year job.

Bradley Cooper, also an executive producer, has a cameo as Henry Girard, an enigmatic arms trader. Girard is shadowy, very powerful, perhaps with terrorist connections. His role isn’t properly fleshed out. He’s a Mephistophelian character who represents the dark and alluring future the boys might carve out for themselves, just as long as they’re prepared to sacrifice their principles altogether. It’s typical of the muddled moral perspective here that he is probably the most appealing character in the movie.

The Purge: Election Year

★★☆☆☆

Dir: James DeMonaco, 111 mins, starring: Frank Grillo, Elizabeth Mitchell, Mykelti Williamson, Joseph Julian Soria

The latest Purge movie has an obvious topical relevance. It is set during a US Presidential election. You can just about see candidate Senator Charlie Roan (Elizabeth Mitchell) as a Hilary Clinton type. A purge survivor herself, she is standing for office on the promise that she will scrap purges if elected. She knows that low-income families are far more likely to be slaughtered than the privileged white elite (who still hold power).

That's why the arch-conservative New Founding Fathers, who control Washington, are so keen to see her silenced and hatch a plan to have her killed during purge night. Writer-director DeMonaco does his best to freshen up the franchise he created. However, once the hooter goes and the 12 hours of state-sanctioned mayhem and criminality begins, the mix is very much as before. There are the hunters and the hunted. Leo Barnes (Frank Grillo) is Roan’s head of security, trying to keep her alive on the Washington streets.

Along with the usual crazed vigilantes, they have government soldiers pursuing them, using drones and helicopters. Gun-wielding American everyman Joe (Mykelti Williamson) and his Mexican employee Marcos (Soria) stand up for her in her hour of need.

In its better moments, the film has the urgency of old John Carpenter thrillers such as Escape From New York and Assault On Precinct 13. DeMonaco serves up plenty of chases, shoot-outs and gory killings but, amid all the mayhem, he soon loses sight of the political subtext. In the end, this Purge is little different from the last one.

Cell

★★☆☆☆

Dir: Tod Williams, 93 mins, starring: John Cusack, Samuel L Jackson

This surprisingly clunky Stephen King adaptation starts badly and goes downhill. Clay Riddell (Cusack), a graphic novelist who feels guilty that he hasn’t seen his wife and son in many months, is at Boston airport waiting for a flight. All of a sudden, everyone around him using a mobile phone turns into a raving, frothing, head banging, murderous zombie.

Clay flees in the company of subway train driver Tom McCourt (Samuel L Jackson in listless form). They hide out in Clay’s apartment and then head across country with Clay’s young upstairs neighbour Alice for company. It doesn’t help that the zombies (or “phoners” as they’re called), move in unison like glorified Morris dancers when they’re on the rampage.

“There’s no competitiveness, no selfishness. In fact, they may be the next stage of human evolution,” old schoolmaster Stacy Keach helpfully explains the group behaviour of the phoners. The survivors are prey to terrible dreams and it becomes increasingly difficult to tell who is human and who is a contaminated “phoner”. There are some intriguing ideas here but in its execution, the film is as laughable as it is frightening or provocative.