A String of Anecdotes Rigged to Make the Author Look Good

Rating: 5/10 (13 March 2006)

I cannot understand how those TV critics gave this film two thumbs "way" up. This is the season of overrated movies maybe.
Voice-over narrators are not inherently bad. In SMALL doses they work well, say, in detective stories, and movies where the main character--not the author or biographed person being portrayed by an actor--but a fictional CHARACTER--is doing the narration, for example, in the fabulous Kind Hearts and Coronets, or in Lolita. A narration, whether it's purpose is to "cover" events of 20 years, or to manipulate the audience into thinking/feeling a certain way--a la TV's Desperate Housewives--is not a substitute for a plot, and the necessary UNITY a good plot must evince in order to produce an emotional reaction in the audience to the events the main character undergoes. That unity cannot be glued on by a voice-over narration. A good plot must show--you've heard this term--an "arc". This is what produces catharsis--why YOU watch movies, or read novels. People, that is, consumers, are most often concerned with "what is the movie about?" But subject matter is only part of a story. The same subject matter in Lords of War can be seen on TV news and tabloid shows, and even Frontline. I seek something more from movies and books. I seek magic, escape, satisfaction.
It takes guts to set yourself free from "what happened" and turn real events--by selecting some, and eliminating others--into a real story. Telling "true" stories is most often a straight jacket on artistic story-telling. "But it didn't happen that way," squawks the person whose precious story is being told. The collaborating writer shrugs and rewrites the scene, removing material which might have helped create a better STORY. An example of an excellent, compelling movie "based on true events" was Shattered Glass. Lord of War is a mediocre movie, at best "watchable", but unsatisfying.
Just because it contains the obligatory moral-of-the-story doesn't make it good. Message movies never get out of their own way. Actually, the moral of Lord of War is curious and a bit too facile--Uri justifies his profession because the U.S government is the world's largest arms dealer, so what right does the U.S. gov have to persecute/condemn him?
It's EASY to get a rise out of people by depicting gore--bullets smashing into heads, etc. It is much harder to bring the audience to satisfaction by telling a great story with great characters.