Lord of War (Limited Edition) [DVD]

“THERE ARE OVER 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That's one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is: How do we arm the other 11?”
The opening words to Nicolas Cage’s new smash hit, Lord of War.
The plot centres around Yuri Orlov (Cage) a Ukrainian refugee who makes his million in gun running with his younger brother Vitaly, played by the ever growingly popular and understandably so, Jared Leto.
The movie tracks Yuri’s progress from working in his parent’s café in Little Odessa, to selling guns to Russian mobsters in his local neighbourhood to conquering the worlds market in tanks, bazookas and machine guns for wars spanning the world’s surface.
As well as tackling the morality of what he’s doing to the world Yuri tries to keep his wife and son in the dark and keep his cocaine-ridden brother at bay.
In a recent interview talking about the film Jared Leto says the film is “Part political film, part social commentary, part character study and entertaining all at the same time, it’s a fascinating movie.” And it really is, it sets aside all the conventions of political cinema before it and really cracks down with an explosion of a movie that avoids that feeling of being lectured like so many others have fallen victim to in the past and really hits the spot to entertain with a star studded cast, sex, guns and drugs really dragging in the younger audience to what would be an 18 rated movie if it wasn’t for the moral messages involved.
Leto also says that he thought Lord of War felt like a huge movie even though it’s an independent film, he says “We were shooting in planes and there was explosions and guns, it really just seemed like a giant film.” And it does, it really lives up to the big Hollywood pictures, this is chiefly due to Nicolas Cage’s great contributions to the film as producer. He wanted this film out there and felt strongly and passionately about the messages involved as it appears did all of the rest of the cast and crew.
As well as the visual effects the screenplay is also eloquently written, it’s funny, it’s intelligent, it’s thought provoking, at one point in the film Yuri’s father asks him ‘Is this really how you want to be remembered?’ ‘I don’t want to be remembered’, Yuri replies, ‘that means I’m dead’, a quote the better educated of us will recognise as from Oscar Wilde but could quite easily be mistaken as the screenwriter, Andrew Niccol’s own work. Who, incidently also wrote the gem that is ‘The Truman Show’.
Andrew Niccol also directed the film and did a bloody good job while he was at it, he is obviously as set as Nicolas Cage in this one.
Is gun running right? Is it right to equip the poorest societies on earth with the means to keep killing each other? Is it right to provide guns that children as young as 10 will use to kill people? Is it right to fuel blood hungry people with the means to commit genocide? Is it right to feed societies like Mozambique that feel that firearms are so important to their society that they would display an AK47 on their flag?
The answers to these questions need to be explored and I’m glad there’s now a movie out there that has the balls to do it.
Basing it’s arguments on a much more global scale, Lord of War uses wars from all around the world as examples of the harm America’s exports can have as well as the problems within the country itself, that, as well as the fact that this movie succeeds where others have failed before, in making an informative, political film that doesn’t feel like a lecture about the ever increasing lack of morals in western society, Michael Moore’s hit in 2002 with Bowling for Columbine attempted to bring the worlds attention to the great problems of firearms in American society and the movie completely over looked the problems that America’s exports have on the rest of the world and while it’s funny in places a person completely unconcerned with politics could not sit through it in the same way that they can through Lord of War. As well as getting the message across Lord of War is a spectacular piece of entertainment.
The movie tackles a lot of personal issues as well as the politics involved, Nicolas Cage’s character has a habit of ignoring his conscience in order to succeed in life and is for the most part blinded by greed and won’t consider anything if it’s going to get in the way of what he wants. The film even used a cover of an old Beatles song ‘Money, that’s what I want’ which acts almost like a theme, it is the song chosen to sport the trailer and is certainly the song I had stuck in my head the whole way down the street from the cinema.
When trying to convince his younger brother, Vitaly, to join him in his gun running business he says that they’re not getting anywhere, he says ‘We’re doing shit with our lives.’ To which Vitaly answers, ‘Maybe nothing’s better than doing this.’ But is eventually turned round to Uri’s way of thinking after being tempted by Yuri’s research into profit margins and joins his business with him.
Later on when his wife is trying to convince him to quit gun running and tells him he’s made enough money and he needn’t do it anymore Yuri tells her that it’s got nothing to do with the money that he’s doing this, he says he does it because it’s the only thing he’s ever been good at, and it really hits home to people, or it certainly did to me that that did seem like a very good reason to do what he does, it may not make it right but it certainly makes it more understandable.
A real cracker of a film that deserves the attention of the public, it has a story to tell and morals to get across, and even if you’re not into all of that political hoo hah it’s a great film with sex, drugs, guns and explosions. You must see this film. Over and out.

Only Nick Cage could pass this off: a guy without a smidgen of conscience that you don't end up loathing, who deals in weapons with the same ease that others go from door to door selling accident insurance for CICA.

Why? Because he's good at it, and because there will always be a market for things that'll kill people. Ethics doesn't come into it; at best there's a little squeamishness when he's asked to pull the trigger himself.

A product of our times, or the child of a dysfunctional society? I doubt it. People without conscience come in all shapes and sizes. Some end up as serial killers, some as arms dealers, some as business tycoons. Take your pick. It's the variety and range of human expression and human 'nature'.

Grounds for despair about the species? Your choice. As for me I think there are enough good people to make continuance worthwhile. But where there is a market for death and brutality, someone will take advantage of it.

It's a grim flick, but a good one. It makes you think; leaves you wondering what exactly to become upset about, because there are so many things; from the world at large to this bunch of messed-up people, ranging from Yuri to parents to trophy wife. Or you could get upset about everything, of course, but be warned, because if you're of that inclination, you're going to come out of this movie with a very dark mindset indeed.

So, beware.

It it worth having been made? You bet.

Till Noever, owlglass.com

Nic Cage is a superstar. He's one of a very few actors in Hollywood who can turn his hand to absolutely anything he chooses and make it work, and Lord of War does nothing to change my mind about that.

Uri Orlov is at a dead end. He works in his parent's diner and lusts after the local beauty queen, but he's a nobody, a nothing. To wake from the nightmare and start living the American Dream he begins hawking small arms to local gangsters and after a trouser staining first deal finds that he has something of a talent for it.

As he moves up the food chain he draws attention from other traders (Ian Holm) and the Feds (Ethan Hawke) and even manages to land his beauty queen. But his high maintenance lifestyle becomes harder to sustain, and there are other prices to pay. His brother falls foul of drugs and he develops an uneasy friendship, of sorts, with a genocidal African dictator (Eamonn Walker), meaning he has to make some serious compromises with his own morals.

Director Andrew Niccol presents us with a stylish, blackly comic movie which is thoroughly entertaining but never quite hits the mark - which can't be said for the copious amount of bulets in the film. Niccol doesn't seem to be able to make up his mind whether he wants to give is a biopic (the movie is 'based on true events) in the style of Goodfellas, a political parable (it's easy to draw inferrence from a Russian/American arms dealer selling guns to an African madman to be used against his own people, especially given America's well documented reticence during the Rwandan genocide of the mid nineties), a thriller or an action movie. What he does give us though is definitely worth purchasing, if only for the opening sequence, which follows a bullet from production to its ultimate, deadly end.

I remember leaving the cinema after watching this and saying to my friend, "I hope they put some decent documentaries on the DVD" and it seems that they have, as the extras list includes a look inside the arms trade. My copy is pre ordered - I suggest you order your now.