Tell me something new

Rating: 5/10 (23 November 2006)

Arms trade is obviously nothing surprising for Americans. Wholesaling them abroad is neither. Its moral implications are completely clear.
So this movie was supposed to tell us something new about it. But it falls short in most respects by several reasons.
First, it simplifies all characters to the rule...'one of each'. For instance, all world dictators are incarnated by the fictitious Colonel Oliver Southern. All other arm dealers, the 'ones with principles', are incarnated by Simeon Weisz. The military corruption is simplified to one of each side, Ukranian and American top officials... All good men are represented by an ubiquous incredible cop, Jack Valentine. Finally, most of the women depicted in the movie are faceless prostitutes, besides Orlov's wife, an ex-top model. So, in the big picture, we have a frustratingly simple scene. The usual salt and pepper of violence and sex completes this moral 'fast food' product, that never goes deep into any character background or motivation.
Second, the whole movie turns around Mr. Cage's performance, who stays in the screen since the very beginning to the last shot, with the only exception of a notable trailer introduction that may summarize the whole thing probably better than the 120 minutes lenght of the movie that comes next. Is it hard to tell apart the many truculent parts Mr. Cage has played in the past from this new character. Only brief appearances of Ian Holm, as sole competitor of Orlov, dignify the poor acting of the rest of the crew, never seeming to believe their own parts.
Finally, the movie fails to dare going further in revealing the intrincated associations of the industry military complex. The only mention to US military, the world's number 1 arms exporter, is a top rank US General with no face that appears briefly a couple of times.
Maybe, Andrew Niccol faded before this dangerous subject when compared with his previous very interesting films, as GATTACA or The Truman Show, or maybe he had to surrender for the sake of average US people's understanding, but a lost chance, in the very bottom line, to tell us something new, something powerful enough to recommend this movie to be watched.