If you care about Africans killing Africans, you must see this movie

Rating: 10/10 (20 September 2005)

You might give this a 7 or 8. I rated this a 10, but I have a personal bias. You see, I am a criminal defense lawyer trying a war crimes trial in Africa that to me was unexpectedly a part of this movie. At the end of the movie, it says it is "based on fact." It certainly is. Names of the guilty and the charged are changed, but the essential facts are true. The movie only touches on the Sierra Leonian-Liberian civil wars, so it only touches on the atrocities that occurred there. That is all it could do. This is not "Hotel Rwanda." It makes a different point. Nevertheless, the atrocities I've heard testimony about are horrible: amputations of innocent civilians, including children, cannibalism, and wanton homicide, all financed by diamonds plundered from the Sierra Leonian diamond mines. (Cage in a dream, or is it? Child: "Let's ask the white man. Mister, will my arm grow back?") Nicholas Cage is not great in his role, but, on further reflection, maybe he is. After all, he plays a conscienceless arms dealer whose own trophy wife in his penthouse apartment in NYC doesn't know what he does for a living. If that was what he was conveying, he did it quite well. Eamonn Walker, brilliant in five seasons of "Oz", a British Shakespearian actor, plays Liberian president Andre Baptiste Sr. In real life, Baptiste is Charles Taylor, charged with war crimes for fomenting the Sierra Leonian civil war who may never come to trial unless Nigeria no longer gives him asylum. Ethan Hawke is an Interpol agent hot on Cage's trail, trying to bring him to justice, morally outraged by Cage supplying both sides of any conflict, just for the money. After all, Cage rationalizes, somebody's going to do it, so it might as well be me. This movie shook me. I've been dealing with the Sierra Leonian civil war for 16 months now, but only as a lawyer and only when I am there in trial. When I am home, I accidentally find it on the big screen. I'm so glad I took the two hours to go.