Warlord With Half a Heart

Rating: 8/10 (14 October 2005)

Nicholas Cage plays Yuri Orlov, a displaced Ukranian who grew up in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, NY. In his early 40s, Yuri is a major player in black-market international arms dealing. We learn this via his narration, which is reminiscent of Ray Liotta's voice-over in "Good Fellas." The two men survive similar experiences: rapid success, daunting adventure, cocaine abuse, and, inherent in their chosen fields of endeavor, much trouble. Unlike Liotta's character's quest to become a "made" player in the Mafia, Yuri doesn't seem to have any goal in mind other than doing what he does best: deal. In fact, via his narration he ponders quitting and then tells us why he decided to stay in the arms-dealing game, "I was good at it." He's like an accomplished master chef who decides not to toss off his apron for to take a seat with patrons in the dining room. Instead, with the knowledge that it's hotter than hell in the kitchen, he stays put, knowing deep down that it is in the heat that he feels most alive.
Throughout his dealings Yuri is pursued by a straight-laced Interpol agent played by a scruffy-faced Ethan Hawke. Though the agent is on the right track in believing Yuri to be the arms-dealer he is, the agent is too tied to making the perfect collar--with all evidence 100% in order--to bring Yuri down. Hawke's main job in the movie seems to be to voice the liberal, anti-gun, human rights point-of-view. He does so, though one gets the feeling that he resorts to such rhetoric to abstain from his real goal: bringing Yuri down.
At one point in Yuri's career he decides to quit. Perhaps because of the agent's constant presence or perhaps due to the evolution of his heart. (Mind you, he gets out of the arms-running business into a lucrative business exploiting developing countries in other ways.) Naturally, this option to stay out is undermined when one of his former clients, the gun-crazed dictator of Liberia, strong-arms him into making one last killer deal.
If you dig Nicholas Cage, like I do, you'll like this movie. And, beware, you kind of have to like him because this is a very insular movie with not much to do with anyone else but Yuri. It does not have the emotional resonance of "Constant Gardener" but then again that movie suffered from knocking one over the head with its messages.
This movie avoids the knee-jerking, opting to let us judge for ourselves what's right and whose wrong.