A good movie to watch, but a little far-fetched

Rating: 6/10 (26 February 2008)

My big issue with this movie is that Yuri Orlov gets into the gun trade too easily, isn't violent (or even all that tough) and doesn't have a team of bodyguards to protect him whenever he's striking a deal. He travels around to places like Liberia all by his lonesome, entirely at the mercy of ruthless and armed guerrillas.
In appearance, it's somewhat like "From Hell," which was a better movie (also with Ian Holm) that, simply put, looked too "clean." "Lord of War" lacks a certain grittiness, making even Liberia seem too glitzy and polished.
I know it's only a movie, not a miniseries, but it seems that a lot of "gunrunner start-up" details are left out and you definitely feel the lack of them to the extent that you might have trouble suspending disbelief.
Definitely worth a look for entertainment, but I certainly didn't come away with an impression of how one gets into gunrunning and what an actual gunrunner is like.