While watching this very good movie I kept thinking that it was high time an idea like this was turned into a film. Most stories coming out of Hollywood are the success stories of the lucky few who make it and with the happy ending but that is not real life. Real life is about the tens of thousands who want to break into an extremely difficult field as fickle and cruel as show business and those who try their whole lives and never get the break they deserve even though they are very talented. People who are cursed with the “show business bug” very often work in horrible depressing menial jobs during the day in the hopes that they will be discovered at night at some comedy club or at some improvisation group, which is the premise of this movie. During this film, there are several improv sketches performed by the comedy group that comprises the cast of this movie and I thought just about all of them were very well done even though they all started by asking the audience the same question, “Did anyone have a bad day today”?

This film follows a group of friends who have started their own comedy group in the hopes of being discovered by a weekend show that is equivalent to Saturday Night Live. One of the friends of the cast, played by Keegan Micheal-Kay is discovered and as a result of this most of the rest of the cast become jealous which is a major part of the struggle to be one of the lucky few in show business; extreme jealousy for the very few who make it. Keegan’s experience with this Saturday Night show proved that even if you make it or think you have made it, you still have to deal with the cruel comments of people who are in charge and anoint themselves the judge and jury over other people. Insecurity and fear is a major part of performing, most especially comedy and you have to have respect for anyone who would even try to make a group of people laugh in front of any kind of an audience. The actress Gillan Jacob’s does a very believable job as a comedian in the improv group and plays Keegan’s girlfriend and they face several relationship problems as Keegan’s character gets on that Saturday Night Show and she is too afraid to audition. One of the other members of the group is Mike Birbiglia​ who also wrote and directed this very solid film.

I highly recommend “Don’t​ Think Twice”.

So why did producers in Hollywood decide to remake a great classic movie that originally came out in 1959? This one is easy, its all about name recognition and making money. The producers of this movie knew that most people have at least heard of Ben Hur, even if they never saw the original movie. So they thought that they would have a guaranteed level of box office because people have heard the name, Ben Hur. According to IMDB, the movie cost over 100 million dollars to make but for the opening weekend it only made 11 million. We all know that this movie will not be in the theaters for 10 weeks so odds are high this film will lose money. The problem is that the original movie is an all time movie classic that was 3 hours long, but this movie is a pale imitation of the original and only 2 hours long. The only thing worth seeing in this 2 hours is the chariot race at the end, which is better in this movie because of the technical abilities that are available now with computer effects that were not available in 1959. In the end, what makes money and what is worth going to the​ movies is a great original​ story and most ideas like this one will fail. People normally do not like remakes of classic movies even with the addition of a well-known​ movie star like Morgan Freeman, who is not nearly enough of a presence to rescue​ this film. On top of this the scenes that had to remove to reduce this film to 2 hours were some of the best scenes of the first movie. Another big mistake.

If you have not seen the original Ben Hur that came out in 1959 you should see that great movie and miss this one entirely. I would recommend trying to find the Chariot Race on YOUTUBE for this new movie.

War Dogs is a movie about greed, corruption and stupidity which always go hand in hand. The easier the money seems to be the greater the possibility for crime, screwing over other people, corruption, and stupid mistakes. The success and all that money go​ to your head and many people actually become stupider the easier it seems to make money. This certainly was true during the glory days of the internet bubble in 1999 and the first 3 months of 2000. All the things that seemed to work so perfectly for so long very quickly stop working and then you start to lose money, very quickly. The saying goes, “If it seems to good to be true, then it probably is”. This is true of the stock market bubble in 1999 and it was definitely​ true of the story behind the film War Dogs.

Jonah Hill and Miles Teller star in this very good movie about the true story of two young men who get involved in finding and selling weapons to the United States Government based on a simple website where a list of many thousands of Government Weaponry supplies are available for any company to bid on. The Government website open bidding process was a new law made available by the Bush Administration in 2004 to potentially lower the cost of the purchase of Government weapons and thereby giving more companies a chance to make money to stimulate the economy.

The mastermind of using the Government website to bid and provide weapons to the US Military was the idea of Efraim Diverolo, played by Jonah Hill and later David Packouz, played by Miles Teller. They form a company called AEY – nothing more than a series of 3 letters that according to Efraim stand for absolutely nothing. Very soon the very simple and brilliant idea of “searching the website for crumbs that nobody else wanted” got out of control and before long the money and the risks became greater than either Efraim or David ever thought they would; including​ driving into Baghdad from the country of Jordan to illegally run guns into IRAQ while the IRAQ war was currently being fought. Due to the many Government regulations and restrictions, each new deal that Efraim and David tried became more difficult, causing them to take bigger risks that not only risked their precarious business but even their lives. The irony here is that if they both stuck with the original business plan of only getting involved with the small contracts that no other big vendors wanted then none of the criminal activity and risks would have occurred, giving them all the money they would ever need. As it often does, greed and easy money makes you want more and makes you stupid as soon as you think you are smarter than everyone else and you learn the obvious lessons the hard way. I found the very short prison terms of Efraim, 4 years and David, 6 months house arrest, extremely low amounts of time considering their crimes. Somewhere in this film, I thought their small prison terms should have been explained. At the end of the movie, we also find out that AEY could sell arms to the US Government again in 2022.

There is also a very good back story concerning David Packouz and his attractive wife played by Ana De Armas and David’s struggles to make a living by selling bed sheets to retirement homes and as a massage therapist. What makes their lives​ even more complicated is David’s lying to his wife about the gun running and they have a baby. Bradly Cooper also has a small role in this movie, playing another gun runner who gets involved in the biggest and most dangerous gun deal in the film.

This movie was very well done and I highly recommend it.