In a way, War Dogs is all Goodfellas' fault. Back in 1990, Martin Scorsese's swaggering mob opera inspired an entire crime movie sub-genre you might call the fleece procedural: wild-but-true stories of real-world scams and cons, gleefully narrated by a participant in a kind of jet of confessional diarrhoea. Scorsese's two further fleece procedurals, Casino and The Wolf of Wall Street, are also masterworks of the form, but it's proven fertile ground for directors as varied as David O Russell, who recounted a botched FBI sting in American Hustle, Adam McKay, who gave an insider's view of the financial crisis in The Big Short, and Michael Bay, whose Pain & Gain reframed a Miami extortion racket as a bad-taste burlesque of the American Dream.In every frame of Todd Phillips' new film, you can sense the Hangover director thinks he's found his Goodfellas - or at the very least, his Big Short.It's a black comic drama - based on a true story first related by the journalist Guy Lawson in his nonfiction book Arms and the Dudes - about two back-slapping bros who wade into the international arms dealing racket and soon find themselves sunk up to their double chins.It's narrated by Miles Teller as David Packouz, who reconnects with an arrogant former school pal, Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill), at a mutual friend's funeral.Efraim is making a small fortune fulfilling minor defence contracts for the US government, and offers David a slice of the pie: with his massage business faltering and a baby on the way, he hungrily accepts. The moral component of their job simply doesn't register.They're only doing it to get rich, which they do almost immediately, at seemingly little personal risk (at first, anyway). Efraim's company is called AEY, an initialism which in real life was made up of the first letters of his and his siblings' first names. In the film it stands for absolutely nothing, which is a nice touch.This and the inevitable carnage that follows - kidnappings in Albania, armed pursuits across the Iraqi desert - is all related in detailed voiceover, with all the other expected Scorsese-aping tricks in situ. The camera excitedly tracks in on Efraim and David making deals, grinds into slow-motion for hot cars and women (inevitably, meetings take place in strip clubs), and freeze-frames awkward moments that are immediately and smirkingly expanded on by Teller's narration.The screenplay, co-written by Phillips, Stephen Chin and Jason Smilovic, wafts its wrists portentously at Bush and Cheney and solemnly picks out lines of dialogue in white-on-black on-screen title cards. But the satire hits with powder-puff force thanks largely to the film's ruinous lack of moral shading around David and Efraim's exploits.The big ethical takeaways are as blunt as ''Don't lie to your girlfriend" (here played by Ana de Armas, in the thankless role of David's other half) and "While everyone's making money, don't be greedy": no match for the conscience-racking, moral-compass-spinning schadenfreude of The Wolf of Wall Street.There's no compensatory depth in Teller and Hill's performances either. Teller's straight man has all the charisma of a dusty shoe, while Hill's eccentric risk-taker is nothing but loud clothes, bad language, not-quite-ironic-enough racism, and a laugh that sounds like air escaping from the world's saddest balloon.War Dogs is less a film for everyone who loved The Wolf of Wall Street, Goodfellas, The Big Short, and their ilk than for everyone who misunderstood them. - ©The Daily TelegraphOthers sayAt best, a missed creative opportunity; at worst, a quasi-celebration of two vile schemers, one that ignores the brutality of the world they capitalised on. - David Sims, The AtlanticTHAT rare thing: a based-in-reality movie that gives you a buzz. The film just about tingles with the antic pleasure of seeing people get away with things they shouldn't. - Owen Gleiberman, VarietyA FILM about horrible people that refuses to own the horribleness. - Matt Zoller Seitz, rogerebert.com..