Nicolas Cage = Charisma Destroyer

Rating: 2/10 (12 April 2009)

Ahhhh.... OK. I'm going to start out by saying I don't like Nicolas Cage. I don't think he can act. So I was biased going into this movie, but I tried to keep an open mind. It didn't help.
From the get go you know this is going to be very preachy, anti-weapons hippie nonsense, which I can take.
I don't mind trying to get messages across through film.
But when you open with a BADLY CGI'd bullet going through manufacture just to shoot an African child in the brain, you know it's going to be unrelenting and unenjoyable preaching.
Now.. onto the acting. Jared Leto, Ian Holm, and Bridget Moynahan are... incredible. I'm serious. Their acting is absolutely amazing in this movie. It's really too bad that Charisma Destroyer sucks all of the potential from their performances.
Whenever Nicolas Cage is on screen you are distracted by just how bad his performance is. You can't connect to the character, you can't like him, you can't hate him, you just keep saying to yourself, "Oh God, I hope Nicolas Cage shuts up soon."
And this movie really gives Cage a chance to shine in all of his glory as he delivers the same wooden performance in EVERY scene with EVERY line and EVERY voice-over.
And even when the good actors are on-screen, you start to think... oh well maybe there will be something interesting with the drug abuse here, or maybe the gunrunner's wife will have a good character moment. NOPE!!! Cage needs to interrupt us with another voice-over.
Have I mentioned my loathing for Nicolas Cage?
Anyway... besides Charisma Destroyer, the plot is very preachy. Interesting characters could've made up for this, or letting us decide whether Orlov was right or wrong intellectually instead of giving us paper-thin excuses for actions THE CHARACTER knows are wrong. But no. It's just preachy. And Nicolas Cage is such an unlikable character, you are force fed the message that gunrunning is bad.
2/10 - Nicolas Cage adds a -3 modifier to any film he stars in. This film could've been really good and really interesting with a stronger lead. It would've been perfect if it allowed us to choose whether Orlov was good or bad and Cage was gone. Instead we're force-fed this nonsense.
SPECIAL NOTE ON NICOLAS CAGE - I don't know the man. He could be very nice. However, I have yet to see him ACT in a film, which makes me generally dislike him.