Why not make a movie about a real "Lord of War" - Joachim Von Ribbentrop?

Rating: 10/10 (20 September 2005)

This bizarre, troubling, yet excellent movie is about a sociopath masquerading as a legitimate businessman who is so deluded, cynical and out of touch with his own feelings that he is able to effectively rationalize his own criminality without giving it a second thought. Indeed, according to this movie, the way to make a "fast buck," and to marry the woman of your dreams, is not through hard work, or being a law-abiding citizen, but by being a gun runner - and a gun runner who snorts cocaine and flaunts all laws whenever it suits his criminal purposes. But what makes this movie even more chilling is the outstanding performance by Nicolas Cage who aptly portrays a man who on the surface projects an image of civility that belies his sinister activities that promote war. And what is worse, the character works in collusion with government officials of other countries, further underscoring the corruption that marks his nefarious enterprise.
This movie brings to mind the career of Nazi Germany's notorious Foreign Minister and war criminal, Joachim Von Ribbentrop. Like the Nicolas Cage character, Von Ribbentrop was also a warmonger, and also like the Nicolas Cage character, was socially adroit, fluent in several languages, a fancy dresser and had a successful marriage to a beautiful woman and had a nice family. Yet anyone familiar with the history of Nazi Germany knows the havoc Von Ribbentrop caused and how his suaveness was a mere facade for a man who was an irresponsible opportunist who promoted war and recklessly helped lead his country to total destruction. The Nicolas Cage character fits the Von Ribbentrop mold. Joachim Von Ribbentrop was the "Lord of War" who engineered the infamous Nazi German-Soviet Union Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939, which is arguably the biggest single example of outright warmongering in history, where two countries, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, connived, in secret, to obliterate a third country, Poland, and then, to the utter amazement and disbelief of the entire world, DID IT, marking the the start of World War Two. So what about making a movie about Joachim Von Ribbentrop? Or what about making a movie about an actual historical case (a pun, get it?) of gun-running, such as, for example, Lend-Lease where the United States, acting as the "Arsenal for Democracy," shipped weapons to the British while ostensibly remaining neutral, or the Soviet Union's amazingly reckless decision to sneak nuclear armed missiles into Cuba, which almost caused a nuclear war? What WERE the Soviet bureaucrats and militarists thinking when they concocted THAT crazy scheme to sneak missiles into Cuba? What WAS that arch-warmonger and real "Lord of War" Joachim Von Ribbentrop thinking when he concocted that insane treaty with the Soviet Union which all but guaranteed a war? These might provide interesting material for a movie.
P.S.: That both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union no longer exist is evidence that even in our war-ravaged world, justice occasionally still does prevail.