Movie Review - Lord of War (B-)

I’ve said before that previews are very tricky, since in only two or so minutes they must communicate not only the plot but also the mood and feel of a movie. The “Lord of War” preview promised – to me, anyway – a lot on which it did not deliver, and in doing so pointed out how the movie’s potential far outpaced its actual execution. Go here for the preview.

We all know that gun running is bad, so we don’t need to be preached at about it. This is more of a dark comedy subject, with the energy and insanity of something like “Catch 22” or “Fight Club,” and Yuri Orlov (Nicholas Cage) opens the movie (and the preview) with exactly that sort of attitude, addressing the camera directly: “There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That’s one firearm for every twelve people in the world. The only question is, how do we arm the other eleven?” There are a handful of other moments in “Lord of War” that hit this same extremely effective note, such as when Orlov gives away an entire planeload of arms to passing natives in under fifteen minutes, but they are few and far between.

Instead, the movie focuses on the broader human tragedy that results from gunrunning. Yuri’s brother, who also serves as his sometime-partner, is a washed-up coke head who takes multiple trips to rehab. At one point we see a firing squad taking aim at a lineup of young teenage boys. Yuri lies to his wife and kid about his job and his whereabouts (yes, that’s right, he has a wife and child – not exactly conducive to running guns). His major competitor, played by Ian Holm, is a dour, uninteresting man who believes steadfastly in the morality of his business since he takes sides when selling. “Lord of War” simply preaches too much, choosing emotional impact, clumsy foreshadowing, and predictable pathos where detachment, stylization, and dark comedy – and I mean pitch black – would have been much more effective. Bertolt Brecht would have a fit.

Beyond the miscalculation in tone, the production values are great, and the acting is decent as well. I’m not a huge Nicholas Cage fan (possibly he peaked with “Raising Arizona”), but he takes Yuri through a variety of situations with a mostly believable mix of amoral detachment and self-loathing. Jared Leto does a nice job as Yuri’s drug-addled younger brother, and Eamonn Walker is brilliant as the barely-reigned-in psychotic Liberian dictator Andre Baptiste.

Long story short, “Lord of War” should have been a movie about the high-pressure, over-extended, madness of the world of gunrunning, chock full of frenetic moments of insanity that make you laugh and leave you empty at the same time. Instead, it has a handful of promising and original moments, but slides slowly into a preachy tale of how gunrunning will get a lot of people killed and destroy your family life at the same time. It is a moderately entertaining movie, but the lost potential is a bit frustrating.


Yuri (Nicholas Cage) and younger brother Vitaly (Jared Leto) emote in front of a less-than-subtle backdrop.