Lord Of War
Review by Lisa Ann Cockrel | posted 9/15/2005
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Lord Of War
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MPAA rating: R
(for strong violence, drug use, language and sexuality)
Genre: Action, Crime, Drama
Theater release:
September 15, 2005
by Lions Gate Films
Directed by: Andrew Niccol
Runtime: 2 hours
Cast: (Yuri Orlov), (Vitaly Orlov), (Ava Fontaine), (Simeon Weisz), (Jack Valentine), (Andre Baptiste Sr.)
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Food. Water. Shelter. These are the basic human needs most people can agree upon. Yuri Orlov would add one more—bullets.
"There are 555 million firearms in worldwide circulation, one for every 12 people," says the erstwhile arms dealer (played by Nicolas Cage) in the opening moments of Lord of War. "The only question is, how do we arm the other 11?"
Writer/director Andrew Niccol (The Truman Show, Gattaca) based Yuri on five real-life gunrunners, and his movie is a primer on the global arms trade for the MTV-influenced masses—a hip soundtrack, a jaded anti-hero, and a look at armed conflict worldwide that you don't normally get on the nighttime news.
Nicolas Cage and Jared Leto play brothers who are caught up in dealing arms
Spanning decades, it starts in the '80s in Little Odessa, an enclave for Ukrainian immigrants in Brooklyn. Yuri's family—his parents and a younger brother, Vitaly (Jared Leto)—operates a small restaurant, but he wants something bigger. A close brush with death during a mafia shootout gives Yuri his inspiration—guns. There's always a market for guns.
He goes from his first local sale ("The first time you sell a gun is like the first time you have sex. You have no idea what you're doing, but one way or another, it's over too fast") to a global player in Hollywood, but it's on the international stage that the story kicks into high gear. With Vitaly at his side, Yuri travels the world providing everything from guns to tanks to attack helicopters to the world's dictators, drug lords, and rebel leaders. The post-Soviet Ukraine provides most of his goods—and most of those of his competitors. Between 1982 and 1992 over $32 billion in arms were stolen from the Ukraine.) But perhaps more shocking is the movie's contention that when the U.S. government engages in conflict overseas, it often leaves those arms in the country after the troops pull out. It costs more than they're worth to ship the guns back home. Slipping money to a few well-connected military officials buys Yuri the US artillery.
Yuri (Cage) and one of his clients
The havoc wreaked by Yuri's wares always stays just outside the camera's view and reflects Yuri's conscious decision not to accept responsibility for the ultimate application of his goods. The camera averts its eyes, much the same way Yuri does. As the narrator, he informs the audience that mankind is violent and there will always be fighting. This isn't his fault, and the way he sees it, there's nothing wrong with making a buck off this reality that is much larger than his own participation. If he's not selling guns, someone else will, so why not be the one to make the money?
Vitaly's conscience is not so brazen, and he soon succumbs to a drug addiction in what seems to be an attempt to escape his brother's world. That world includes a wife he deceives at every turn, a son he rarely sees, and Jack Valentine (Ethan Hawke), an Interpol agent hot on his tail.
Lord of War has a surreal edge, despite being enmeshed in world events, with absurdity and dark humor laced throughout. Yuri walks by a woman laying bricks by hand on his way to a business meeting where he will sell mortars that are likely to destroy her work. Women clad in camouflage lingerie prance on the top of tanks at an artillery show, selling the machinery of war like one might sell a sports car. When Yuri is shot in the stomach point blank by a customer (violating his own maxim, "First rule of gunrunning: never get shot with your own merchandise"), he doubles over, but survives unscathed.
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