Time will be Kind to this film even if 2005 wasn't

Rating: 10/10 (27 October 2005)

Sold as a black comedy--in which the laughs are the main point, it's really a satire or satirical drama/tragedy. This is more along the lines of films like UNDER FIRE and SALVADOR than DEAL OF THE CENTURY. And all the better for it. Easily the best film from this writer/director. It's free of the irritating trendy jump cutty style of the day but is very stylish and evocative. It's I suppose a comedy of the absurd and of the inescapable in this (the film's and our's to a great extent) war happy world.
But the tone is perfect throughout and there is nice use of songs in the film and a fascinating scene where poor people take apart an airplane--it's like watching ants eat a dead animal, leaving only the skeleton.
It feels like an honest movie about the greed and wheeling and dealing of selling guns. It's fun to watch someone succeed and that keeps your interest even as you and the character realizes the horror of what it's really all about. You may say, of so it has a preachy or mock heroic ending. No it doesn't go that way either. A perfectly made movie about the commerce of war and that's the element that this film argues drives the whole thing. Cage's character says once, "I'd rather they fire my guns and miss as long as they fire my guns." I won't go on and on and tell you it's an important movie, but it is very involving entertainment. Not amusement. Entertainment, it's about something without feeling like a sermon. Forget the bad ad campaign and give it a chance. In years to come this film may well be remembered long after the "hits" of this rather weak movie year have faded.