No tacky blockbuster here. Cage ROCKS!

Rating: 8/10 (20 October 2005)

You'd think a movie about guns starring Nic Cage, Jared Leto and Ethan Hawke would be just another explosion-laden atrocity of a movie, wouldn't you? It's OK to admit it - I did too.
But it's really not. OK, there are explosions, and a couple of them are quite spectacular and dramatic. But that's OK too. Drama is good.
I think I am going to be so bold as to compare Lord of War to Scarface. I'm not saying Cage is Pacino standard (not yet anyway, I do have quite a soft spot for Cage - he's just so sardonically cool). Anyway, Lord of War is a relatively modestly-paced account of Yuri Orlov's (Cage) career in the gun-running (or arms trafficking) industry. A Ukrainian immigrant to New York, Yuri is bored with his life and finds his calling in 'sales.' He then deals guns to pretty much anyone, disregarding the highly respected illegal arms trading 'code' of choosing sides.
Cage plays Orlov fantastically. He has no self-pity and pretty soon, we have no pity for him. There are a couple of points in the movie where Cage has a choice - he can prove he's a good guy at heart, or lock his soul away forever. Lord of War overtakes more obvious movies by taking the harder road. It makes difficult decisions in choosing how to engage the viewer. Instead of puking its guts out to secure the audience a blind and ultimately useless identification with the protagonist, Lord of War sticks to its guns and tells the story as it should be told: painfully.
Don't worry, I haven't finished yet. Although Lord of War exceeds many many expectations and structures itself as a well-intentioned, political and cynical movie, it does have its Kaboom moments, where subtlety is replaced by nice, white subtitles which ram the point home, where voice-overs feel the need to clarify the blindingly clear and where characters decide to express their emotions too overtly.
Overall though, Lord of War works so well because of it's ambivalence towards Hollywood. It's a film that critiques Western attitudes towards war ethics and war-torn regions but it also capitalises on Hollywood's slickness, its euphemistic ability to justify its actions and sell itself to its most sincere enemy. Orlov is the smooth charmer who can talk the hind-leg off Andre Baptiste, let alone a donkey. He fails himself and his loved ones and can still be redeemed again and again. Is he a nice guy or a smooth talker? Sincere or a great actor? Just like Scarface capitalised on its action, graphic violence and spectacle even though it was really the story of the rise and fall of a flawed man, Lord of War re-invents the gangster genre and uses the very Hollywoodness that Scarface tries to escape from to turn Lord of War into a post-Hollywood epic which doesn't need morals to philosophise about ethics.
In a word: it's a cool film.