Enjoyable

Rating: 7/10 (30 January 2006)

I was pleasantly surprised by how good this movie was, considering it didn't get a major release and stars Nicholas Coppola. That's right, Coppola. He does't GET to rely on his familial connections to get into Vinewood, then pretend otherwise as if he got where he is based on acting skill.
ACTION) This isn't an action movie, despite the guns. The effects are functional, and there's a cool intro sequence that follows a bullet from manufacture through travel to use.
COMEDY) LoW is a dark movie, and it's peppered with bits of dark humor here and there that can be good for a chuckle if you're sick like me.
PLOT) The movie is a fictional character study of an illegal arms merchant as he develops his business, gets paid, and runs from The Man. The script is good, and the flick wisely decides to set things up as a sequence of interesting narrated Vignettes rather than a straightforward story. This lets us skip from one story to the other quickly, and keeps the movie moving at a brisk clip. The only time the movie slows down is during the last quarter, where our antihero undergoes his crisis of conscience; that sequence could have been handled better.
The narrating is passable, but sweet lord Mr. Coppola cannot act, and it shows, and while his valium-drip monotone was OK in a simple action movie like Face Off, this isn't Face Off. As the focal point, he's supposed to be carrying the movie, and he's the worst actor here. Only the script saves this movie.
Regardless, the character he plays is a well-written totally amoral salesman, rationalizing his death business. It's those people with moral convictions, the government agent who won't bend the rules to catch his prey and the competing arms dealer who takes sides in conflicts based on politics, who are the losers. All the protagonist sacrifices are those family members who insist on following a code of morality that no longer seems applicable in a world where people are going to kill each other, anyway, no matter who's supplying the ammunition.