I was an equal opportunity merchant of death. I supplied every army but the Salvation Army.

Rating: 9/10 (4 October 2009)

Remember the cocaine factory scene in Robocop where everyone has the barrel of a gun in their face and Clarence Boddicker (played by Kurtwood Smith) says "guns guns guns!"? That quote is Lord of War in a nutshell. This is a movie all about guns. It's about illegal sales involving quantities of military-style firearms on the black market, the peaks and valleys of those who deal in them, and the power of guns, including the deadly force they employ and the sense of empowerment they give to those who wield them. It's a story of survival, not from the barrel of a gun, necessarily, but of surviving one of the deadliest games in the world, where your best customers are the most unscrupulous scum bags on the planet with more blood on their hands than many a headline-making dictators while the most ardent of crime fighters hunts you down day and night, and where cunning and, in some cases, the law are the only defenses you have.
Since the end of the Cold War, the Kalashankov has become the Russian people's greatest export. After that comes vodka, caviar, and suicidal novelists. One thing's for sure, no one was lining up to buy their cars.
In one of the better performances of his career, Nicolas Cage portrays Yuri, a man who builds an empire of illegal arms dealings from humble beginnings, selling a couple of punks two Uzis in a cheap hotel room. He and his drug addicted brother Vitaly (Jared Leto) sell to anyone and everyone (except for Osama Bin Laden, not on any moral ground, but because he has a habit of writing checks that bounce), from the post-Soviet Russians to the African dictator Andre Baptiste (a brilliant Eamonn Walker), and even covertly to the U.S. military. Yuri's 20-year journey will see him rise and fall in power and prominence, gain new allies, find himself in competition with fellow arms dealer Simeon Weisz (Ian Holm), marry the girl of his dreams, Ava (Bridget Moynahan), and deal with a determined and incorruptible INTERPOL agent, Jack Valentine (Ethan Hawke).
Evil prevails.
The most fascinating segment of the film, and one of the most original I have seen, is to be found at the open of the film. We become witnesses to the birth, life, and death of a single 7.62x39mm bullet (those used in your everyday AK-47 rifles). We witness its production in a factory, its shipment to a war-torn African battleground, its loading into a magazine, and its final destination, the forehead of a child soldier. The bullet's journey, from the factory to the target, looks rather gimmicky on the surface, but the segment's power is undeniable when taken in context of the story that presents itself over the next two hours. Not only does the opening scenes show us what Yuri deals in, how his weapons work, and what they are capable of, but it is a representative of the various themes found in the movie, too. What we see in the opening minutes tells the story of the movie in a condensed, metaphorical sense.
Lord of War is also a smartly written drama that is well-directed (by Andrew Niccol) and performed to a high level of professionalism by all the actors involved. I was most impressed with Eamonn Walker's performance as the African warlord (or "Lord of War" as he is known) Andre Baptiste. His character is oddly likable thanks to the bigger-than-life smile he wears, but that is just a veneer for the cruel person he is underneath and the massive bloodshed brought about by his ongoing war efforts. His is a character hard to define. At the end of the day, we'd feel no remorse were he put down by a shot to the head (as he so easily guns down a character late in the film), but the way Walker portrays the character we cannot help but enjoy his presence in the movie and his scenes prove to be the best in the film. Nicolas Cage is, well, Nicolas Cage. He brings the same attitude and vocal inflections we've seen and heard in countless other film's he's starred in, but as always, he manages to meld his personality just so to capture the essence of the character he portrays.