The True Story Behind War Dogs, Explained

War is no laughing matter, just in case anybody needs reminding. But there has always been a strain of comedy war films, from “Operation Petticoat” and “Operation Dumbo Drop” via the Mutual Assured Destruction laffs of “Dr. Strangelove” to war-adjacent capers like “The Greatest Beer Run Ever.” In 2016, Todd Phillips gave us “War Dogs,” a movie that plays somewhat like a stoner version of the latter with illegal firearms instead of cans of warm Pabst Blue Ribbon. 

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Inspired by a “Rolling Stone” article about two young Miami dudes who became unlikely gun runners for the U.S. Government, a black comedy about the murky world of international arms dealers will always be relevant in our era of perpetual war. Following movies like “Old School” and “The Hangover,” Phillips might not have seemed like the obvious choice to direct a greed-is-bad black comedy about such a serious subject. As he proved in his later “Joker” movies, Phillips is nothing is not obvious, waving on-the-nose satire like one of those jumbo foam fingers people take to baseball games. 

Yet sometimes, blunt can be a good thing, and “War Dogs” is never more lucid than in the opening moments when our narrator states: “War is an economy. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either in on it or stupid.” After that insight, “War Dogs” never quite manages to land another significant blow on the military-industrial complex. But it is entertaining enough with solid performances from Miles Teller and Jonah Hill as our two greedy protagonists, plus a neat but not entirely convincing appearance by Bradley Cooper as a shady profiteer. If the film has one major fault, however, it’s that the stakes feel pretty low even if the destination for the boys’ weaponry isn’t. Those stakes would have seemed even lower without a few fictional touches. Let’s take a look at the real story to see why.

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David Packouz (Miles Teller) is a college dropout working as a massage therapist in Miami who needs to make a better standard living after his girlfriend Iz (Ana de Armas) announces they have a baby on the way. Luckily, his prospects change when he bumps into Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill), an old pal from high school who has since made a lucrative living selling arms to the U.S. government.

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Diveroli has cottoned onto a nice little earner. Scouring a government website for federal defense contracts open to the private sector, he targets smaller deals that the big fish ignore but nevertheless represent a significant amount of money for an enterprising individual like himself. Then, all he has to do is find a way to fulfill the order through his various shady connections.

Diveroli offers Packouz a job at his company, AEY, and they soon strike gold with a contract to supply thousands of Berettas to the Iraqi police force. The only snag is getting the firearms past an embargo and into the country. The pair hire a driver and take the shipment overland from Jordan, narrowly escaping with their lives after passing through the “Triangle of Death.”

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The risky drop-off makes them both rich, but it’s chump change compared to the next coup. They blag a massive contract to supply the U.S. backed Afghan troops with 100 million rounds for their AK-47s. Sourcing that amount of ammo seems a tall order, but their new acquaintance, black marketeer Henry Girard (Bradley Cooper), has access to a vast cache of AK-47 rounds in Albania. It seems too good to be true, and it is — turns out Henry neglected to mention the bullets are Chinese-made and therefore illegal due to an American embargo. Diveroli refuses to accept defeat, but his actions lead them down a dangerous path toward an eventual visit from the FBI.

“War Dogs” fits into that category of movies like “The Wolf of Wall Street,” and it’s fairly faithful to the true story of David Packouz and Efraim Diveroli. As you might expect, much of the wheeling and dealing that goes into securing federal arms contracts isn’t especially cinematic, and many small details were condensed or omitted altogether for the sake of brevity. Nevertheless, screenwriter Stephen Chin does a pretty succinct job of including the most important beats while keeping things digestible for a casual audience.

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Packouz has admitted that he and Diveroli were never in any real physical danger, which might seem surprising if you take “War Dogs” at face value. It opens with an attention-grabbing scene of his onscreen counterpart getting threatened at gunpoint in Albania, and the film’s major set piece is their hair-raising adventure in Iraq. Both these moments, however, were added to increase the tension and stakes. This makes total sense from a dramatic point of view; the movie would be mostly two dudes searching the internet without such scenes.

Chin drew from real-life for the Albania and the Iraq episodes. For the latter, he tapped into his own experiences. Chin took his life into his own hands by sneaking into the country to meet Brent Balloch and Jack Roe, two entrepreneurs who had set up a radio station just before the Iraq war started in 2003. Determined to write a screenplay about their exploits, he hired a smuggler to drive him across the “Triangle of Death” to secure the rights to the story. That dangerous jaunt became the basis of a blacklist script called “I Rock Iraq” which found its way to Todd Phillips. When Phillips met with Chin to talk about “War Dogs,” he asked to use the Iraq episode to give his movie more action.

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Henry Girard, Bradley Cooper’s character in “War Dogs,” is based on real-life arms dealer Heinrich Thomet. The Swiss national was the co-founder of B&T AG, a defense supplier that specializes in firearms and tactical equipment, before selling his share of the company in 2005. This was around the time the movie starts out, and Thomet was placed on a watch list by the U.S. State Department as an arms trafficker in the following year.

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During the real Afghan deal, Thomet did much of the negotiating with Albania on behalf of Diveroli and Packouz, buying the ammo through his own company in Cyprus and re-selling to AEY. Thomet took a cut as the broker and put an extra layer of protection between the U.S. Government and the unsavory legal and ethical implications of buying arms from a notoriously corrupt country like Albania. Instead of Packouz, Diveroli dispatched another friend, Alex Podrizki, to oversee the re-packaging of the 100 million Chinese shells. There were no kidnappings or death threats like in the movie, but a double-cross was in play in the opposite direction: Diveroli found out that Thomet was charging AEY twice as much for the ammunition than originally quoted.

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Once the deal was exposed by the “New York Times” and the AEY boys faced 71 counts of fraud, Thomet pulled a vanishing act. He was later flagged by Amnesty International and investigated by the U.S. Government for running sanctioned machine gun parts from Zimbabwe through Montenegro to the United States. In 2011 or 2014, Thomet bought the largest arms manufacturer in Montenegro and carried on producing automatic weapons and sidearms. Despite the controversy surrounding the Afghan deal, the Swiss dealer was once again involved in supplying the U.S. military with arms through a third party in 2017.

As we find out at the end of “War Dogs,” Efraim Diveroli and David Packouz were sentenced to four years in prison and seven months’ house arrest, respectively. For his part, Packouz has expressed some regrets about working with Diveroli and AEY. He has also leveraged the success of the movie by setting up War Dogs Academy, an online course that promises to help people win lucrative government contracts “with zero prior experience or significant investment.” 

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On the flip side, Packouz has used his experiences to do some good. He has stated that he was always more into music than guns and spent his time under house arrest developing the BeatBuddy, a hands-free drum machine. He also founded Guitars Over Guns in 2008, a non-profit organization that helps disadvantaged youths by giving them a musical education. He formed Singular Sound in 2013, which now provides the BeatBuddy to the Guitars Over Guns program.

Diveroli added another two years to his sentence after he was busted for possessing firearms and allegedly seeking to instigate another arms deal. During his time behind bars, he unsuccessfully sought to reduce his term by informing on other inmates. After his release in December 2014, Diveroli wrote a book called “Once a Gun Runner…” which blamed Packouz and Podrizki for AEY’s failings. This didn’t help mend bridges with Packouz, who described his former friend as “a megalomanic, a damaged person.” Diveroli has ventured into business again with Incarcerated Entertainment, Medlink Health Solutions, and Strongheart Energy Management. Perhaps, unsurprisingly given his past form, he has been involved in numerous other lawsuits since serving his time for the Afghan deal. 

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David Packouz has discussed “War Dogs” in interviews and reflected on that period as an important life lesson that has helped him develop as a person and as a businessman. The higher profile he has gained from the movie and appearing on networks like Fox News presumably hasn’t done his legitimate enterprises any harm. He made a brief cameo in the film and showed enthusiasm for the project by sharing promotional material with his followers on social media. He told Insider that it was “about 70% accurate,” and he was very happy with how it turned out. He was also pretty stoked about being portrayed by Miles Teller, sharing a photo of himself with the Hollywood star on Instagram.

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Packouz’s reaction to “War Dogs” couldn’t contrast more with that of his former friend and business partner. In 2016, Efraim Diveroli announced his intention to sue Warner Bros. and everyone involved in producing the film for copyright infringement. He alleged that Guy Lawson, the journalist behind the 2011 “Rolling Stone” article, used material from Diveroli’s  “Once a Gun Runner…” without permission. 

Todd Phillips secured the rights to Lawson’s long read and Warner Bros. declined to engage with Diveroli and his media company, Incarcerated Entertainment, in a consulting capacity. He agreed to dismiss the lawsuit against the studio in 2018 but became embroiled in another legal battle with his fellow inmate Matthew Cox, who claimed he had written Diveroli’s memoir. The court ruled in favor of Diveroli in the following year. 

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Unlike Packouz, Diveroli has mainly stayed out of the public eye. Perhaps, unsurprisingly given the alleged copyright infringement, he hasn’t spoken in favor of “War Dogs.” He encouraged his followers on social media to skip the movie and read the “real story” in his book instead. Sadly for him, “Once a Gun Runner…” didn’t become the overnight bestseller he hoped. Even with the buzz around the film, he had only sold around 1,000 copies as of November 2017.