Great Cage Film!

Rating: 8/10 (27 March 2012)

This is one of Nick Cage's better movies of late Cage plays Yuri Orlov, an immigrant who, bored of his small-town existence, decides to pursue a career as a gun-runner as a means of getting out of his otherwise dull lifestyle. What's more, he finds he is rather good at it and so begins the tale of his adventures on the shadier shade of life.
Orlov is an inherently unlikeable man. He traffics in guns, no doubt causing the deaths (indirectly) of countless thousands of people. He smokes, does drugs, marries a girl primarily because of an infatuation (not love), uses his brother whenever it suits him and is generally full of unpleasant moral leanings. In short, he should be a character we could care less about and, in fact, might hope to be brought to justice.
Yet, in spite of this and thanks in great measure to clever writing and Cage's performance, Orlov grows on you very quickly. You find yourself watching his antics (narrated by Cage himself throughout the movie) with amusement and even, in some ways, admiration.
Of course, if this were a typical Hollywood movie, you might expect that, in the end, Orlov's empire would come crashing down around his ears and he would end up in jail. But this is not a typical movie.
Instead, the final revelation of the film is one that, perhaps, we all know deep down. That, behind every bad man is another man, one step removed from the dirty-hands of the man below him and wielding more power. And behind him yet another, and so on, all the way to the top of the power tree. In short, the movie tells us that power is corrupt and that, no matter how good your intentions, there is always someone more powerful than you who is not so scrupulous.
Of course, Cage's character does lose much in the course of his career - wife, family, brother etc. But in the end, thanks to "the man above him" he walks free.