Hmmm, Adnrew Niccol really has a lot on his mind....

Rating: 7/10 (30 November 2005)

Nicolas Cage leads as Yuri Orlov, an arms dealer that believes his trade is fair, so to speak, and that he is doing his job, well. Director Andrew Niccol offers another social assessment, this time scraping a little bit more bone.
Niccol tackled social discrimination in the form of genetics in Gattaca, the world's lust for tele-visual junk in The Truman Show and now he resides in the helmer's chair for the Lord of War, a tongue in cheek look at the world's arms trade and the politicians and warlords that pay for Cage's designer lifestyle and maintain his designer wife.
Mr Niccol is a man that has a clear vision. His previous works all engaged the audience with an underdog, someone that society has said has no chance who eventually circumvents the odds and liberates themselves. This film however is a little trickier to decipher.
The opening shot trails across a sea of bullets and lands on Cage, explaining the woeful truth via his jobs description: "1 out of every twelve people on the planet has a gun, my job is to figure out how to arm the other eleven," and then we are taken on a clever life cycle of a bullet from it's birth to it finding it's home - a child's head. Indeed, tongue-in-cheek, indeed the opening sequence is laced with brutal cynicism but is Niccol wagging his finger or trying to provide us with a vehicle where we, the popcorn chewing audience, make our minds up? Both methinks, but the answer is hard to figure out. Possibly due to the subject matter or the reality that there are Yuri Orlovs everywhere, courtesy of none of the characters being romanticised- there are no good guys or bad guys as such.
However, on closer inspection it is clear Niccol wanted to create a pure anti-hero, someone who cares for his family and his wife but has the moral unwavering of a government assassin, which is essentially what Cages' Yuri is. The film works very well as a blasé report of a trade that seems futile to try and stop despite peoples' efforts. One said person is Vitaly (Jared Leto) who's flawed Adonis is present again in this role and is compelling to watch as his morals outweigh his brother's and provides a good contrast. Ethan Hawke, continues to reinforce his Oscar nominated calibre as an Interpol agent constantly outwitted and outranked by Cage and his supporters (i.e. customers)..
This is a good film, that explores subject matter that hasn't really been tackled in this vein. All performances from the lead, Bridget Moynahan as Yuri's wife to Ian Holm's rival arms dealer are concrete.
Andrew Niccol has provided yet another interesting social critique that may hit harder than his others but nevertheless should be appreciated for its audacity if not for its unsettling truths that (maybe) should have been tackled a while ago.