come on, tell an actual story will you?

Rating: 6/10 (28 January 2006)

OK look, this movie gets an A for its bold moral stand: it is AGAINST gun running that KILLS PEOPLE! Especially poor African people who have been royally screwed by warlords and their tireless posses of sadistic killers. I was waiting for the audience member who would cheer the AK loving crazed son of a dictator using starving refugees for target practice, but to my surprise, nobody did. Score one for finding a topic on which EVERYONE will agree with you - random death in pointless wars fueled by amoral arms dealers is bad.
But would you like to know why a single one of these countless wars starts or continues? Or about the big business of arms trading, i.e. legal companies and not one guy working out of storage container under a bridge? You won't learn anything about these things in this film. What you will learn is the Hollywood lesson that moral feeling is the important thing. And the American political lesson: you are either for it or against it, so why have facts, geopolitics, economics, connect people to motives (besides money, drugs, and hookers), or any of that boring crap that explains how things actually work?? You will also learn the following: Africans are either victims, looters, or mindless killers; African leaders are mindless killers; Africans die because their leaders are mindless killers (oh yes, with First World guns); African dictators's sons like gold chains, gold-plated AKs, gold watches, local Ho's in Dallas cheerleaders outfits, and mindless killing; Africa has lots of local Ho's who like to watch people being mindlessly killed; the top international arms dealers ride in their own planes to deliver the goods to Sierra Leone or wherever; former communist generals will sell billions in lethal arms to whomever for a Rolls and a VCR
and so on. I'm not being too nice about this film, which is on an important topic, has a good cast and many good moments. Plus parts of the film offer a descent into hell that has some real power. But the film accepts that the average audience consists of political children who don't know about the arms trade or that the US government is a world leader in it. Therefore the film illustrates this fact rather than telling a story that would analyze this fact. The filmmakers make the usual mistake of assuming no one will watch a movie that doesn't eliminate all complexity in favor of a story about one or more movie stars acting normal in abnormal situations and talking about it. Oddly enough, this comes off as more didactic rather than less, since the lessons don't flow from the missing complex structure but from the stars' reciprocal speeches. Too bad.