Lord of War (2005)

Best movie ever!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Nicolas Cage stars in more movies than any actor I've ever known, and occasionally he makes a good one. This would be amongst those: a devastating indictment of the international arms market as supported by corrupt governments, and a searing picture of one man slowing sinking into the abyss of evil which he creates himself. If you like Yuri's flippantly wicked attitude at the start, you certainly won't by the end... unless, you want Darth Vader to win all along. Ethan Hawke provides good support as a by-the-book Interpol agent, and Bridget Monynahan is effective as Yuri's unsuspecting wife, in fact the whole cast from crazy African despots to impoverished townspeople is great. The only thing I would say is that some of the dialogue is a bit too 'on the nose' in terms of the ongoing battle of good vs evil, and sometimes the plot feels more like a sequence of events instead of having a cohesive narrative. But these are just minor gripes. Most people will come away from this feeling just a little less safe than they were before, and a bit more depressed at the state of the world we live in. And, guess what? These are exactly the emotions the film strives for. Bravo. 7/10

There are grander and more complex ideas in the opening and close of Lord of War than in any of the minutes that are sandwiched by them. They posit that Yuri Orlov is like any other toiler of their trade, merely a tiny cog in a finely oiled machine that will chug on no matter who is delivering the goods or pulling the trigger. It's a sobering and frightening thought, although for Yuri he is less tiny than he might like to think. The role asks for a master of deflection and thin justifications. Cage has a logical answer for any challenge, a tight-lipped smile for any moral quandary, although in the end it is again about money. Would he be a more interesting character if there was more to this motivation? It is structured like certain Scorsese films, with the man perched high on his domain, flaunting his wealth and influence directly to the audience via narration, flashing luxury and excess until we are also somewhat entranced. But Niccol ultimately resists this direction, and the result is a rather muddled moral tale that lacks spine. He goes in the more serious direction. He could have posed Yuri as a Henry Hill or a Jordan Belfort, have him go out guns blazing into a satire at full tilt. And indeed there are flashes of this potential; the stirring strings of Ride of the Valkyries at a military show, how the giving away of guns is handled like children flocking to a free ice-cream truck, and the way Yuri covets the end of the Russian communist state, not because of any political idealism, but because of how much guns and tanks he can now resell for a fat profit. Could any other actor besides Nicholas Cage pull off kissing Gorbachev like he does? Coincidentally he is a man of many talents, and can also play the opposite, the straight man with a vein of dark humour running through him. He is a showmanship through and through, which means he is in the right business, at least until the mundane trappings of domesticity come for him. War may be the ultimate business to Yuri, but even guns cannot be his first love. Using the tools and deceptions of his trade he woos his childhood crush, and eventually finds some semblance of settling down. It is here that Niccol tries to craft a conflict; most men wouldn't be flying around the world dealing with firearms if they had Bridget Moynahan to come home to, but of course Yuri isn't most men. Running guns is supposed to consume him, but the problem is that there isn't much to consume in the first place. Ava is, as she herself admits, nothing more than a pretty face, and the extended family is neatly tucked away someplace where only a occasion phone call can reach. The other quandary is the moral one, which cannot be ignored in such a macabre affair. Though Yuri might attempt to distance himself from the consequences of his trade by way of clumsy metaphor (gun-running is compared to everything from losing your virginity to peddling vacuum cleaners) at the end of the day he must still confront what his guns are doing. Two figures are played off the coldness of Yuri; his brother, a coke-head who nevertheless sees things a little clearer than his older brother (as in, not just in dollar signs), and the rugged Interpol agent Jack Valentine (Ethan Hawke woefully miscast as the righteous, lawful type, and with a terrible name to boot). But the film tales the easy sentimental route, showing us nothing new. We already know that Yuri is fooling no one with his talks of "I'm not the one pointing the gun". His one-liners ("At least mine have a safety switch") might have a brief zeal but in the end we aren't charmed by this equal opportunity merchant of death. Yuri, at the start and by the end, has already convinced himself of no wrongdoing, but can he convince the viewer? Well, he certainly gives it a good shot.

I watched this movie expecting to be shocked, surprised, maybe disgusted. Now then, the filming is good. Some scenes, like the ones in Liberia, shine in particular for the way they are pictured. The story however stinks of predictability. They want you to hate the protagonist and his despicable moral choices. This is perfectly OK. But there are several scenes where what was going to happen played out in my head just before it did on the screen. The movie pulls low punches on your conscience and sometimes it backfires. It does when at the end the way this story is told makes you think "nonsense, it's not really like this". And there are several parts when it does. I expected more. I would say, not so thoughtful, surely overrated, some cools / funny / ironic scenes (which is why I gave it a 5 and not a lesser vote).

This film is rather hard to classify. Is it a black comedy? A pseudo documentary? A war film? A drama that studies a really cold-blooded character who does what he does "because he does it best?" I finally settled on Mockumentary.Yet Nicholas Cage pulls it off. He is the most cold-blooded SOB one can imagine: the combination to the container filled with weapons to kill thousands is the birth date of his son. In the end, his brother rebels while they deliver arms, after he sees soldiers hack a woman and child to death with machetes. When the soldiers negotiating the arms deal mow Cage's brother down with machine guns, Cage continues negotiating: why get himself killed, too?It's hard to imagine someone like that can exist, but after all, Cage is just a bigger version of the machete-wielders. And according to the film, just poppycocks compared to the presidents of the US, Russia, France etc, who deal in arms and destruction on a yet greater scale.Indeed at the end of the film, just like these leaders of entire countries, Cage is "too big to fail." He laughs in the face of the justice department agent who captured him with solid evidence in hand, and wants to put Cage behind bars for good. Cage explains to him with a smile what is really going to happen once he leaves the room, and so it does.At which point we return to Cage as the narrator, full circle with the beginning of the film, except now we get to see what makes the crunching sound under his shoes: millions of bullets, just like the one that we followed from manufacture to the skull of a child in the opening credits.The film certainly preaches, but in a way so absurd, matter-of-fact and darkly comedic that it does not appear heavy-handed, merely unbelievable. And yet we know all too well that the events we see in the film, the useless maiming and killing of millions, happened. And the arms to do the deed did come from somewhere.The film sometimes descends into mocking itself, at other times the pieces fall into place too conveniently, so it remains merely very good. But well worth watching, even if you're not into conspiracy theories.