It's a well made movie but it fails at what it's trying to achieve.

Rating: 7/10 (1 July 2008)

Really, this is a well made and good looking movie but it's also a movie that obviously tries to send out a message, in which it just simply fails. It's a movie that tries to make us sympathetic with the movie its main character. It's obvious that the movie tried to make us understand what drove him and why he did the things he did. It even perhaps tries to make it seem as if it's a noble cause what the main character did but you can just never fully agree with what the main character did in the movie, which also doesn't make you care and sympathize for them, which makes you root for the Ethan Hawke character instead.
The movie tries to tell it's main story in a "Goodfellas" type of approach. We know that the main character is bad and that what he does isn't good but yet we sympathize with him. Yes, it's obviously Andrew Niccol picked the "Goodfellas" approach with this movie, which gets all the more confirmed by the movie its last scene, in which the Nicolas Cage character speaks directly into the camera, addressing us the viewers.
The movie would had probably been better if it was more of an action-thriller about the Ethan Hawke character trying to hunt and catch Nicolas Cage, or at least in that case the story wouldn't had been such an issue then.
But no, "Lord of War" is by no means an horrible movie. It's too well made and good looking for that. Andrew Niccol proofs himself to be a capable director, even for a movie that due to its controversially (though the eventual end result can be called hardly controversial) didn't get much studio and financial support. It's a movie with lots of pace and style, which makes this a good as well as a pleasant one to watch. It's not a movie that is a heavy one or serious one to watch and it luckily picks a more light approach, which is the reason why this movie is mostly so perfectly watchable.
The movie has a good cast, which sort of all makes it more a shame that the movie only focused on the view point on things of the Nicolas Cage character. Besides Cage, the movie features Jared Leto, Ian Holm and Ethan Hawke in it.
It's a good movie, even if it doesn't achieve at what it tries to achieve with its viewers.
7/10
http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/