A Serious Topic Gets a Very Dark Comedy Treatment

Rating: 8/10 (23 September 2005)

"Lord of War" is a very black comedy that turns quite serious. It deals effectively with issues that "The Interpreter" botched because this uses real place names in real conflicts with no trussed up sympathies for white victims, assisted by vivid location shooting from Brooklyn's Brighton Beach to South Africa.
Nicholas Cage is another "Gordon Gekko" as a Ukrainian immigrant who finds a knack for using his gifted entrepreneurial skills to achieve the American Dream, but as a quick-witted, film flam gun dealer very like the dapper drug dealer in the comparably stylish "Layer Cake."
In an arch narration, Cage's "Yuri Orlov" shrugs that his business is no morally different than a tobacco or car salesman. With its eye on international affairs, the film doesn't touch on second amendment issues of the U.S. gun market or on what goes around comes around in terms of terrorism, except that he blithely notes that he didn't sell to Osama bin Laden because his checks bounced. The film is full of dark and absurdist humor, from the opening description of how his family faked being Jews in order to get out of the U.S.S.R. to what happens to an abandoned airplane on the African plain.
Seen through the prism of "Yuri"s burgeoning career and family, the film is particularly good at tracking the impact of the end of the Cold War and the small conflicts around the world that have emerged as an export business from the resulting surplus ordnance, especially those between various liberation fronts that have found their horrific full flowering in Africa. I think this is the first feature film to show the sickening impact of the boy soldiers and blood diamonds of Sierra Leone, while it is equally filled with grim ironies about African realities and contradictions of living in a daily war zone.
Ethan Hawke, as his "Inspector Javert" type nemesis, gets stuck with the clunky idealistic dialog, making obvious what we can already see are the consequences of "Yuri"s actions, even as we are entertained by his flamboyant, Milo Minderbinder type tricks to outwit the law. The ending is appropriately cynical and probably realistic.
Jared Leto, who is much more than his beautiful blue eyes, again movingly embodies a troubled soul, as in "Requiem for a Dream." He and Cage establish a warm chemistry that makes their brotherly trust palpable.
Eamonn Walker of "Oz" is not over the top as a corrupt Liberian power monger, given the horrors that have been perpetrated there. Bridget Moynahan gets to poke fun at her own talents, as she plays a model turned wooden actress who is content on her husband's worshipful pedestal until she slowly wakes up from the fantasy.
Writer/director Andrew Niccol's whooshing camera angles get a bit gimmicky as they reinforce "Yuri"s sales pitches, but they are chilling in showing the enormity of the business and how that volume gets used one on one. It is also a visually exciting way to keep our attention on a serious topic instead of preaching at us, which is reserved for informational text before the credits.
The choice of '80's songs into African and other world music helps to create the appropriate ambiance, though I presume they couldn't get the rights to Dylan's "Masters of War" and Warren Zevon's "Lawyers, Guns and Money."