Is War Dogs Based On A True Story?

Before he empathized with the Joker, director Todd Phillips helped bring the world of international gun running to the big screen.

After wrapping up his billion-dollar "The Hangover" trilogy, Phillips decided to document the lives of Efraim Diveroli and David Packouz, two amateur arms dealers who found themselves in bed with the United States government. Raking in millions of dollars in a manner of months, the duo eventually landed any gun runner's white whale: a $300 million contract to supply the Afghan Army with ammunition and weapons. The guns they provided, however, violated the deal they cooked up with the government. Their empire began to crumble, with charges of conspiracy and fraud being thrown out, per The Rolling Stone. In the film, Diveroli and Packouz are played by Jonah Hill and Miles Teller, respectively.

For Phillips, Diverolo and Packouz were anti-establishment heroes who took advantage of a war that manifested because of a rigged system. "The government knew that they couldn't source 100m rounds of AK ammo in the middle of a drought after two Iraq wars," Phillips told The Guardian. "So they went to these two kids knowing they were gonna source it in a shady way, and as long as nobody knows, wink wink we're cool [...] the guys are kind of awesome."

While Phillps thinks Diveroli and Packouz are on the right side of history, the United States government obviously does not. Because the duo's history and relationship with the government and gun running is so murky, it begs the question: how authentic is "War Dogs"? While the comedy is definitely based on a true story, Phillips' film takes its fair share of creative liberties when it comes to immortalizing Diveroli and Packouz's exploits on the big screen.

Seeing as the film is co-written by Todd Phillips, it's clear that the director's admiration for Efraim Diveroli and David Packouz shines through in the final product. To make the duo's story all the more exciting and chaotic, creative changes to the true story were made.

Guy Lawson, the journalist behind the Rolling Stone article, said as much in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. "They got a lot of it in," Lawson explained. "But you watch the end and you think it's about these guys. It's not." "War Dogs," at least for Lawson, fails to explicitly point out that Diveroli and Packouz were byproducts of a corrupt system. "My job is to create hard-charging, see-through-the-bull ... journalism," Lawson continued. "And Todd's prime motive is to make a movie."

So what changes did Phillips make? The film's kinetic and ludicrous action sequences, namely the two driving through a war-torn Iraq, never happened — they were actually influenced by co-writer Stephen Chin's time in the country, per The New York Times. In fact, the two never dealt with any action at all. Peak moments of intensity happened behind the computer screen. 

Per Fandango, the duo did go around the world, through their travels saw them attending industry events as opposed to getting in battles. In a bid to add complexity to Miles Teller's Packouz, the character was given an anti-war girlfriend in the form of Inez (Ana de Armas). Inez is not real. The same can mostly be said for Bradley Cooper's elusive Henry Girard, a character loosely based on real-life arms dealer Heinrich Thomet. While "War Dogs" isn't a completely accurate tale, it does cover the broad strokes of Diverloi and Packouz's time as arms dealers.