brilliant but problematic

Rating: 7/10 (21 February 2009)

One important point to get out of the way - the use of Interpol in this film is indeed completely fictional, but it has been a conventional fiction in films, especially action films, since the late 1960s, so I am willing to pardon its use here. However, I should also note that this is not an action film, it is not technically even a "thriller," and part of the difficulty assessing the film is in trying to determine precisely what it is.
This is in many ways a brilliant film, both visually and in its dialog, and both a thoughtful and thought-provoking expose of the contemporary arms industry. Yet it has two difficulties in its structure that make it difficult to recommend without qualification. Both have been noted in previous reviews: first, we don't get to see the development of gun-runner Orlov's business, from his first sale to his appearance at an arms-sales convention, where he is already well-known, albeit only as 'an amateur.' How does he get from Brooklyn to there with limited funds? There's actually only one probable answer - major loans - but this is only hinted at when he remarks about using credit cards to pay off credit cards. And even this doesn't explain how he adapted to the culture of illegal arms sales when he first entered it. That's important because obviously that introduction would have gone into the worlds of, first, street gangs, then mobs, then international crime cartels - we know this is true, since we do get the one glimpse of a major sale to a South American drug dealer. But surely this would only be the tip of the iceberg.
The other problem in the structure is more difficult to address, because it is also part of the film's strength. The first two thirds of the movie are presented as high-irony satire on the international arms market. It is only as the final third unfolds that we begin to realize that Orlov, as voice-over narrator, is not speaking ironically, he actually means every word he says. The tone of the film then shifts dramatically into tragedy.
The strength of this movement is that we at last discover Orlov to be a cold-blooded socio-path, even able to disregard the death of his brother, since it doesn't entirely impede the arms deal he is engaged in at the time. This is a man who has only one reason to live, to develop a successful illegal arms trading business. Nothing else matters to him, and because of that he is actually more wretched than the murderous thugs he deals with - they, at least, enjoy what they do, he is merely obsessed with his profession.
That's a powerful statement, to be sure. The question is whether this dramatic shift in tone really works, or have we been, as more than one reviewer expressed it, deceived by the comedic beginning into buying a kind of numbed sociological drama? One reviewer compared this film to Scorcese's "Goodfellows," but Scorcese affects the shift from ironic commentary on Mafia culture to actual gangster film drama in a gradual convolution punctuated by moments of intense violence that point out the moral degradation we should have been admitting all along. "Lord of War" reads as pure satire until the moment it isn't amusing at all, and that is very disturbing. It's hard to say yet whether that is a good thing, or whether it is asking too much from its audience.
Otherwise, as noted, much of the film-making is actually brilliant - in the script and the visuals; and the editing holding these elements together is solid. The acting is quite good, although I found Cage lacking focus occasionally - but this may have to do with the shift in tone noted above. And the film's topic is certainly important enough to consider.
But it's not clear whether a film can go down this path without surrendering some important clarity. I had the same sense with the sudden shift in tone towards the end of "No Country for Old Men;" and as with "No Country," at the end of this film, one is left with an uneasy sense of helplessness. I'm not sure that's where the director wanted to leave us, and I'm not sure whether I like, or even accept, being there.