Does evil prevail? If people actually enjoyed this film, then probably the answer is yes...

Rating: 1/10 (16 May 2006)

Why does this movie fail? Here's why: because it's ultimately superficial and you can't connect with the characters at all. Lord of War is about a Ukrainian man(Nicolas Cage) living in the US, who decides to become a gun smuggler after witnessing a heist and he also tries to win the love of his live, who is a talentless actress, in the process(I'm not making this up, honest). He starts small time(don't ask me how) with second hand guns and also invites his drug-addicted «brother» along, but being a gun smuggler doesn't sound easy. The movie chronicles his rise to becoming a gun smuggler and several encounters with buyers and occasionally trying to outmaneuver an Interpol agent in some of the most bizarre sequences I've ever seen. All through the movie, Nicolas Cage provides the voice over to the whole movie and I seriously wished he didn't. Obviously it's about gun smuggling and the movie tries to draw well-though(not really) ironies about this particular market and, as it's becoming more and more common, the role of the US in all of this(the United States of America as the root of all the problems in the world,of course, what do you expect?). It reminds me of Crash for the very same aspect: like racism, it thinks it's saying something new and revealing some overwhelming truth about gun smuggling. The movie pretends to be deep but it's message is nothing more complex then: Guns are bad; only innocent people get shot or are affected by the market(we all know this is true***sarcasm***);both legal gun sellers and black market dealers are evil(though the movie never explains this); owning guns automatically turns you into a crazy murderer(who needs facts? The scriptwriters think it's enough to show a struggling African country to make their point) ; if we didn't have any guns, people wouldn't kill each other(yes, true and deep); oh, and the US uses a corrupt court to fix the elections(I seriously laughed my butt off when they mentioned this in the movie) and is entirely responsible for everything mentioned above. Let's start with the characters, Nicolas Cage plays a Ukrainian gun smuggler who looks nothing like an Ukrainian, doesn't act like one and doesn't talk like one, not to mention he was a lifeless character, and his rants and monologue just drag the film and bores you to death. Jared Leto does no better and both act as if they're acquaintances rather then brothers or at least not any brothers I know of. The actress who plays Yuri's wife just stalls and the biggest offender is Ethan Hawke, the Interpol agent who has a «deep» sense of morality and wants to stop Yuri(Cage) at all cost, too bad he's barely a character, and his sense of morality is about as deep as a puddle of water,especially in moments where he could have given a lesson of morality to Yuri, he spills out something that seems more appropriate to cheesy action movies then a though-provoking thriller like this. In short you will feel no sympathy for any of the characters nor will you connect with them. If you already hate guns and will buy anything to support the cause,you'll like it, everybody else won't be convinced. One last thing:having the words "based on true events" in a fictional movie means absolutely nothing...