No "Urban Legends: Bloody Mary," but still a good effort

Rating: 8/10 (1 October 2005)

To note that "Lord of War" falls short of its ambitions is less a criticism than an acknowledgment of a good effort. Writer-director Andrew Niccol always has something to say in his films, and here he plays mad scientist, cobbling together bits of "Goodfellas," "Three Kings," "MASH," and a host of other seriocomic socio-political stews to create a lurching, cynical, sometimes frustrating, often sharp portrait of the global arms trade. Niccol's films like to examine the nature of reality, but with "Lord of War," he drops the allegory to poke around the existing world, and those who make it such a violent place.
In the opening credits we follow a bullet from its birth to the death it ultimately causes (this bullet cam recalls, perhaps intentionally, the mischievous police siren from "The Naked Gun" movies). We then meet Yuri Orlov (Nicholas Cage), a Ukranian immigrant who makes a similar journey through the last few decades of global conflict, going from small time gun dealer to the self-proclaimed biggest merchant of death on the planet. Yuri's justification of the immorality of his trade is to practice it entirely amorally, with zero regard for politics, consequences, or loyalties. He explains all this to us in a running voice-over that stretches the entire length of the film, emulating Scorcese's device in "Goodfellas." At one point Niccol even throws in a police helicopter to tail Yuri around New York, an unambiguous tip of the cap to the gangster epic that "Lord of War" so fawningly emulates.
The film spends considerable time on Yuri's family and personal life, and it's here that it has trouble shifting gears. Though there are some good scenes with Yuri's coke-addicted, deadbeat brother (Jared Leto), these family sequences end up repeating themselves, with Yuri tossing out vague, half-hearted defenses of his trade, though it's clear he doesn't think it requires any. The idea is that a family treated with the same ruthless detachment as the gun running business is destined to be yet one more casualty of that callousness, but "Lord of War" gets torn between being a character study and a larger commentary on contemporary geopolitical realities. The film is at its best when following Yuri at work, and his efforts to stay one step ahead of dogged INTERPOL agent Jack Valentino (Ethan Hawke). There's a great, absurdly nihilistic scene in which Yuri, forced by INTERPOL to land a carrier full of guns on a dusty West African road, hops about on the deck, exhorting the locals to take all his cargo "free of charge," then watches over the next several hours as they also take away the plane itself, piece by valuable piece.
Nicholas Cage is just right for this material; his matter-of-fact drawl is perfect for explaining why an arms dealer is less dangerous than a car salesman. "Lord of War" feels like it has more it could say, though, were it less divided between its personal and professional stories. How can we condemn Yuri, it asks, without condemning the society and politics that produce and depend upon him? It's a shame that this film settles for being intriguing and engaging, when more was within its grasp.