incisive black comedy

Rating: 8/10 (12 January 2007)

"Lord of War" is a genuine cinematic rarity: a mainstream black comedy that doesn't soften its material or compromise its vision to cater to audience sensibilities. Nicholas Cage plays the world's foremost private small arms dealer, whose key to success lies in the fact that he never chooses sides in any armed conflict, opting instead to be an equal opportunity "merchant of death" to all. For Yuri Orlov, peace is the only real enemy, and if innocent people have to die to keep him in clover, well, hell, he didn't make this world, and there's no reason why he shouldn't get his if everybody else is getting theirs.
Like a master chef working his way to the heart of an artichoke, writer/director Andrew Niccol peels back the layers of his story to reveal the truths of the international gunrunning trade. Yuri is a chilling and disturbing character precisely because he is so utterly ordinary and difficult to read. Niccol does not portray him as evil incarnate, but, rather, as a reasonably well-adapted family man who just happens to be good at what he does and has the requisite capacity for self-rationalization that allows him to do his job and still live with himself. To his own way of thinking, Yuri is really no different from the man who sells tobacco or automobiles - both products, he explains, that actually result in the deaths of more people than firearms - then goes home to the love and adoration of his wife and kids. Yuri doesn't sell arms because he had an unhappy childhood or out of any sense of entitlement because he feels the world has treated him badly. He simply knows that if he weren't doing business with these murderous dictators - or as they like to call themselves "freedom fighters" - around the world, somebody else would be.
Most of the dark humor of the film comes from the detached, flippant and unemotional commentary Yuri provides as the film's narrator. He is quick to point out the ironies and absurdities inherent in so much of the arms business, and it is only the gruesome seriousness of the consequences that makes us catch our throats as we laugh. And Niccol certainly makes it clear that Yuri is only small potatoes compared to the governments who put far more weaponry into the hands of thugs and mercenaries than Yuri ever does. That little detail, snuck into a title card in the final moments, is the ultimate depressing reality Niccol uses to bring down the curtain on his film. In fact, Niccol bravely refuses to "redeem" his character at the end. Yuri loses just about everything and everyone he cares about at the end thanks to his activities, but the world goes on and he's decided he's going to go right on along with it. And why in the world not? Selling arms is "just what he does." In a very nuanced and balanced performance, Cage conveys just the right note of dispassionate detachment without ever becoming either too callous or too maudlin. Yuri seems to genuinely like people and obviously loves his parents, his drug addict brother, his wife and his young son. That only makes his ability to compartmentalize his morality that much more frightening. Ethan Hawke gives a strong performance as the Javert-like Interpol agent obsessed with bringing Yuri to international justice, and Bridget Moynihan is stoic and sweet as the beautiful young wife who is willing to turn a blind eye to Yuri's activities for only so long before finally confronting her husband.
Funny as well as chilling, "Lord of War" will give you a whole new terrifying perspective on how the world actually works.