I want my two hours back

Rating: 3/10 (22 June 2006)

The problem with this movie was that there was no character development. Yuri decides to be an arms dealer (while working as a waiter in Brooklyn) and with almost no build up or development is suddenly present at major arms bazaars in Russia, rubbing shoulders with the big boys bidding on MiGs and what have you. its like he looked in the "whats happening this weekend" poster at ticketmaster and decided to show up at the super-duper-top-secret arms bazaar in the soviet union. A suitable analogy would be if they made a movie about Madonna and the first scene was her singing in front of the mirror with a towel around her head and the next was her selling out a giant stadium, with absolutely zero transition. I'm not sure how one gets into the arms dealer racket, but if I'm watching a movie about it, i certainly want to see a bit of character development, some steps in between garage band and international pop star. besides this the movie was a general waste of time. They basically took Blow (similar idea: local-yokel boy gets into selling illegal stuff, lives the fast life, makes a bundle, loses wife and kids, and then realizes and regrets the error of his ways after its too late) substituted guns for coke, and then made it crappy when they decided to cast Nicolas cage who, unfortunately for all involved, cant act to save his skin. This could have been a good movie if they had a decent actor and some sort of in-between how-exactly-does-one-procure-a-contract-with-Liberian-rebels kind of scenes. bummer.