And yet, as the summer fades to autumn, along comes Jonah Hill to bring us one of the most mesmerising bad guys of the year so far. Not that, with his smiling blue eyes, high-pitched giggle and “Hey bro!” persona, he seems all that villainous at first. But then, that’s what makes him such a menace – his Miami gun runner is self-confident, fearless, charismatic, and worryingly lacking morals or anything resembling a conscience. In short, he’s the perfect businessman. Maybe we can cut David a little slack, then, for falling under for the spell of a childhood friend, Efraim Diveroli (Hill), who specialises in buying and selling guns. Under the aegis of his company AEY Inc, Efraim initially makes a living by purchasing seized weapons from police auctions and selling them online. But with the second Iraq war and the invasion of Afghanistan in full swing, Efraim decides to target “the biggest gun nut of them all” (his words): the US government. His plan is to acquire guns from obscure corners of the globe and sell them to the US army in the Middle East; to major corporations, the sale of a few hundred thousand Berettas is hardly worth pursuing, but to Efraim, these crumbs from the table are potentially worth a fortune. So it is that David becomes Efraim’s business partner, and a rollercoaster of success and mishaps begins to unfold. For most, director Todd Phillips is best known for such hits as Due Date and the Hangover trilogy – that is, comedies more about anarchy and gross-out gags than dramatic gravity. War Dogs marks a move away from that kind of filmmaking, though David and Efraim’s thing for grass and cocaine allows Phillips to revel in a few stoner comedy moments. Swept along by its jukebox soundtrack, War Dogs is solidly made and handsomely shot, while the performances from Teller and Hill are both excellent. Look out, too, for Bradley Cooper as a borderline terrifying man of mystery who seems surrounded by an almost tangible cloud of sleaze. Phillips’ direction is less indignant and charged with aggression than Scorsese’s, however, and it’s interesting to note that there are far fewer outright funny moments of black comedy in War Dogs than there were in The Wolf Of Wall Street. War Dogs has a similar style and shape to that Scorsese film, but nothing to match the shambling brilliance of Leonardo DiCaprio’s sozzled drive in a Lamborghini, say. What War Dogs does offer is a glimpse into a world of modern warfare seldom scene in movies. Andrew Niccol’s great, underappreciated Lord Of War was also about gun-running, and in some respects it’s the better film. But War Dogs’ setting in the 2000s makes its subject matter seem even more disturbingly contemporary; that two stoners could have made multi-million dollar deals with the US military using nothing more than a mobile phone and a laptop is both hilarious and horrifying. War Dogs is out in UK cinemas on the 19th August.