Hmmm...

Rating: 3/10 (12 January 2006)

Lord of War, for all its radical and anti-establishment trappings, is about as comforting and safe a movie as you could possibly imagine. Its banal, elementary messages can be summed up as: Guns are bad. People who trade in them are bad. Many parts of Africa are messed-up. Nicolas Cage is wearing a hair piece. In an ever-decreasing circle of asinine clichés that would insult the intelligence of a seven-year-old child, Lord of War takes us into the terrible and frightening world of international gun-running. Cage plays an international gun-runner with weird hair and an indeterminate accent. He will sell to anyone, anywhere, as long as they cough up the cash. And what a lot of cash that turns out to be. He lives the high-life. He has everything: a loser little brother, a gorgeous but frustrated wife, stereotype parents, persistent FBI guy on his trail, the works. Keen-eyed viewers may well spot parallels between this film and Goodfellas. And Blow. And no doubt one or two other movies. In other words, we've seen it all before, and done a lot better. Andrew Niccol, the hack who gave Gattaca and Simone to a grateful public, may think he's dealing with heavy moral issues and opening our eyes to the way the world really is. In fact, all he's doing is dressing up a predictable "rise-and-fall" story with a bit of student politics. But no amount of moralising and politicising can disguise the total obviousness and predictability of the whole enterprise. At one point, Cage's wife, an aspiring but not over-talented painter sells her first painting. Guess who bought it? Then, Cage's brother, a drug-addled loser, gets clean, gets a girl-friend and states that his life is getting better all the time. Guess what happens to him? Later, Cage's uncle tells him how great everything is and then walks off to get into his car. Guess what happens then? And so on. Instead of being surprised by the movie, the audience is always at least one, if not fifteen steps ahead of it. The cast includes Ian Holm, Ethan Hawke, Eamonn Walker and Jared Leto (we name the guilty men!). These are all talented and intelligent performers, which only makes you wonder what on earth they are doing involved in this mess. As for Bridget Moynahan, let's just say she is well cast as a model who wants to get into acting but doesn't have the talent.