Evil prevails when good men fail to act.

Rating: 10/10 (4 May 2020)

Scary process to follow a lord of war and see all the external forces that keep him immune from all the legal boundaries. Yuri Orlov (Nicholas Cage) dreams of power and wealth were, ultimately, accomplished, but like most mobster or crime stories the verdict is one of blood, tragedy, and destitution. For Yuri the American government was protecting its interests, so they released him and exonerated him from any legal charge, but he lost all emotional stability. He said it himself: "My family has disowned me. My wife and son have left me. My brother's dead. I fully appreciate the seriousness of my situation.
This is an ominous subject now having 1.2 billion arms in the world in 2020, but the movie left a clear message. Any person that ventures into the lifestyle of immorality and illegality will, ultimately, endure catastrophic consequences. The movie in the initial scenes offers the viewer a perspective of a bullet going through the entire production, distribution, and application process: a stark symbol of the global nature of this problem. Due to the complicated and multi-dimensional nature of the production of firearms and bullets, the main manufacturers and benefactors clean their hands from the consequences, as Yuri was doing it with different rationalization during the movie; the movie helps the viewer consolidate all these factors and understand it holistically.
Nicolas Cage outdid himself with his performance. He exudes so many different emotions throughout the movie that it is difficult to hate him, knowing what he had gone through, and his background in Little Odessa. He was always "attempting" to take care of his family; the family values did not elude him even as he committed multiple criminality and put his brother repeatedly in danger. His reaction to pulling the trigger and committing his first kill was consistent with a person that was in denial and rationalized his entire operation with weak logic and ambiguous statements.
The viewer gets so much information on gun multinational affairs that it is continually interesting to watch the narrative. He lived quadruple lives or had multiple identities being an equal opportunity merchant of death. At the peak of his enterprise we see him get embroiled with the president of Ethiopia. This is when his morality gets put to the test and reaches his threshold of depravity. The dialogue also adds memorable phrases that add flavor to the narrative and his rationality: "Bullets change governments faster than votes"; "I supply everyone but the Salvation Army"; "Evil prevails when good men fail to act, what it ought to say is evil prevails". As ominous as the dialogue is it helps us understand the mind of a person that is relentlessly searching for success in the industry of death and destruction.
The movie might send a morbid message but it's a real one: the gun industry seems to be above the law and the highest players are pulling the strings and committing genocide in a global scale.