Lord of War (2005)
Directed by Andrew Niccol
Written by Andrew Niccol
Starring Nicolas Cage, Jared Leto, Ian Holm, Bridget Moynahan
Release Date September 16th, 2005
Published September 15th, 2005
Writer-Director Andrew Niccol is a filmmaker of great ambition. His resume as a director is short but both Gattaca and Simone are projects of great imagination and aspiration. Gattaca succeeds far better in its story of genetic engineering than Simone did in its examination of fame and technology but both are films of big ideas and grand ambition.
For his latest effort, the dark gun running drama Lord Of War, Andrew Niccol may have his most ambitious subject yet. An in depth examination of the worldwide trade in weapons that takes a microscope to the life of real life gun runners while turning a large spotlight on an issue most Americans refuse to examine.
Nicolas Cage stars as Yuri Orlav, a Russian born immigrant living in the Little Odessa section of New York City. His life track looks laid out in advance: manage his father's restaurant 'til the old man passes then run it until he himself passes. That all changes when Yuri witnesses a mob hit in his neighborhood. The Russian made hardware used in the hit is inspiring and, using some of his father's connections through a Jewish synagogue, Yuri gets into the gun trade.
Soon he is the top distributor in his neighborhood and is ready to go global. With the help of his little brother, Vitaly (Jared Leto), Yuri attempts to break into the international gun trade. In one of the film's most memorable scenes Yuri and Vitali confront Simeon Wiese (Ian Holm), an old school distributor with ties to the CIA, at one of the strangest conventions you will ever see. Women in bikinis selling tanks and armored personnel carriers and worldwide enemies rubbing shoulders as they purchase the weapons they will soon use to kill each other.
Yuri and Vitaly fail to make it in with Wiese but world events soon occur to level the playing field. With the fall of communism in Russia and the end of the cold war, Wiese and his old guard, with their concern for geo-politics and scruples about only selling to countries with top secret ties to the US, are finished and apolitical types like Yuri, who has no qualms about selling to any and everyone regardless of doctrine, are in.
The rise of Yuri is transposed by the fall of Vitaly. Unable to cope with the violence that results from his brother's projects (he witnessed a teenager executed with one of Yuri's guns), Vitaly begins taking drugs and disappearing for long periods. The far more unscrupulous Yuri on the other hand is as casual about his own drug use as he is about his product and soon lands the life of his dreams with the girl of his dreams played by Bridget Moynahan.
In a story such as this, the audience is trained to wait for Yuri to get his comeuppance. Evil is almost always punished in movies and, while Yuri may be charming, he is clearly evil. Andrew Niccol however keeps you guessing all the way to the end as to whether Yuri will pay the price for his evil deeds. Niccol's scripting is as efficient and cold blooded as his lead character and his direction almost as cool.
Be sure to arrive on time so as not to miss the films opening credits which follow a bullet from production to distribution to execution, literally. It's an extraordinary sequence shot from the bullet's point of view and set appropriately to Buffalo Springfield's classic "For What It's Worth". The credits combined with Nick Cage's extra chilled voiceover narration perfectly set the tone for this brilliantly dark satire.
The odd thing about Lord of War is that while I recommend it as a movie people should definitely see, I don't find the film entertaining by typical Hollywood standards. The film is far more disturbing than entertaining and yet that worked for me. If you don't walk out of Lord of War with a lot of heavy issues on your mind then clearly you were not paying attention. This is one of the smartest and disquieting political satires since 1999's Wag The Dog or 1962's original Manchurian Candidate.
I know sometimes people go to the movies just looking for simple or even mindless entertainment and if that is the case for you right now then Lord of War is not the movie for you today. If, however, you're out to enjoy a smart movie that deals in big issues and big ideas then Lord of War is a must see. In the intellectual sense Lord of War is highly entertaining.
The one thing you can take away from Lord of War that you could call entertaining by any standard is the performance of Nicolas Cage whose strange career track takes yet another fascinating turn. His last film, the brainless PG adventure National Treasure, showed Cage at his laziest and least thought provoking. In Lord of War it's back to that weird kind of charisma that brought him to fame in his Oscar winning performance in Leaving Las Vegas.
Andrew Niccol has directed sparingly in his career in Hollywood, preferring to write for others. His exceptional script for The Truman Show was everything his own directing effort in Simone wasn't in terms of its satire of celebrity. But one thing that all of Niccol's writing and directing work shows is an aim toward grandiose ideas, incomparable ambition, and a social conscience. Niccol is the rare director in the era of the blockbuster who is interested in telling large, involved stories about American culture, politics and even science.
This consciousness separates him from most other Hollywood directors who seem to prefer telling small stories with smaller characters with nowhere near the ambition of Niccol. It is this quality that will lead Andrew Niccol to create a true masterpiece someday. Lord of War is not that masterpiece but it shows he is on the right track.
