United States, 2005Cast: Nicolas Cage, Jared Leto, Bridget Moynahan
Director: Andrew Niccol
My Rating: ***1/2 / ****
“That’s one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is: How do we arm the other eleven?”, Yuri Orlov (Cage) matter-of-factly saying right before one of the best opening sequence of the year in what I think is the most underrated movie of 2005. Why, even James Berardinelli hasn’t reviewed this film yet.
The rest of the film is told in flashback, with voiceover by Orlov, starting in 1980 and end to where he is now.
Yuri Orlov and his family came to US from Ukraine when he was a young boy. They runs and owns a restaurant. And Yuri, with his brother Vitaly (Leto) were part of the business. Until one day, a turn of event led Yuri to what later become the profession he’s best at. An arms dealer.
A sensitive issue, a bleak comedy, a grand visual, a great performance, oh, make it plural, great performances, a strong-witted script (came from Andrew Niccol who also wrote “The Truman Show”, “Gattaca”, among others), and an appropriate ending, made this movie a clean swift land on a top 6 / 7 of my shortlist on best of 2005. I even wondered myself, how come that there weren’t much attention given to this film. And why’s all the love to that gay-thingy “Brokeback Mountain” whilst none given to this movie? Okay, Brokeback may be better but not by this much of margins. Well, I guess everybody’s entitled to his / her own comment. And mine is, I enjoyed “Lord of War” a great deal.
To say that this film is a kind of a bleak comedy maybe a little bit off by some people’s standard. But it was a satiric comedy as we see Yuri made his way through the arms business ladder, dealing with cold-hearted dictators (or rebels) as a customer, rivaling with equally (if it isn’t more) cold-hearted business-rivals, but at the same time squeeze his way moral-wise by rationalizing his crimes, his denials that his business is actually killing-off people (“it’s not our wars”, he said), and his pretention to live a double-life in front of his family.
Yuri’s narration througout the movie was quickly became the center of this movie. It would of course needed a hand of a good scripter to deliver such narration in order to brought this movie to its highest point. Andrew Niccol was clearly up the par with the high expectation. Yuri’s narration was able to give a satyrical feel to otherwise blatant and pretentous political-war drama, Hollywood-style.
This film, as Yuri’s narration recapped his 20-years of gun-dealing career, dealt closely with various war-zones all-over the world (most often shown, was his dealing with his best customer, a dictator ruling Liberia, Andre Baptiste) and of course, by doing so, shown how cruel a thing the war is. We see a child executed military-style in Lebanon, a child not more than 12 wielding an AK-47, listed as a soldier, a real-soldier not just a mere citizen wielding a gun, a dead men lying on the street while a nazar bird digested on his remains, a mother stabbed and killed by several men, a shot through the head, with brain tissues and blood sprayed nicely (nice?) behind him. As far as Yuri’s morality issues concerned, he’s been on every scene I mentioned. But, he made an excuse to himself, justified his action by saying, “it’s not my war”. One particular scene even involved Yuri’s customer went only several hundred meters downhill from where the deal took place to made a massacre upon refugee camp consisting mainly of women and children in Sierra Leone right after his customer made purchase. And what does he say? “there was seven massacre more on Sierra Leone that week”. Will he be able to get out of the industry, as it started to creep on his family? Will he realize that his business is actually killing people, and like it not stained his hands with blood as well? Will he realize, as his counter-role, a rare-breed officer (since he couldn’t be bought) Valentine (Hawke) states that the longer he’s in custody, the more lives could be saved? I leave those questions’ answers to you.
Nicolas Cage as Yuri gave a superb performance up to a point where we can’t easily imagine someone else on his seat. But, the other supporting characters were less developed. Especially his nemesis. The one that supposed to be his arch-rival, his counter-role, the one that obsessed with him, to brought him down, to justice, an interpol officer Valentine. Tough he’s described by Yuri as his arch-nemesis, I’m barely able to see his obsessions.
One point of interest though, the movie ends with a statement that even though there are many private arms dealer like Yuri, the biggest arms dealers in the world were US, UK, Russia, France, and China which all five were permanent member of UN Security Council. Well, it wasn’t something entirely new. Everybody knows it already. But to made a statement in a commercial entertainment-product such as film? Well, that’s new.