Lord of War

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Lord of War
Directed by Andrew Niccol
Produced by Nicolas Cage
Chris Roberts
Andreas Grosch
Written by Andrew Niccol
Starring Nicolas Cage
Bridget Moynahan
Ethan Hawke
Jared Leto
Eamonn Walker
Editing by Zach Staenberg
Distributed by Lions Gate Films
Release date(s) 16 September 2005
Running time 122 mins
Country USA USA
Language English, Russian, Spanish
Budget US$42 million
Gross revenue Domestic: $24,149,632
Worldwide: $72,617,068
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Lord of War is a 2005 film written and directed by Andrew Niccol which starred Nicolas Cage. It was released in the United States on September 16, 2005, with the DVD following on January 17, 2006 and the Blu-ray Disc on July 27, 2006. Cage plays the antiheroic protagonist, an illegal arms dealer with similarities to Russian arms dealers Viktor Bout[1][2][3] and Leonid Minin. The film was officially endorsed by the human rights group Amnesty International for highlighting the trafficking of weapons by the international arms industry.[4][5]

Contents

[edit] Plot

The movie begins with Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage) standing in a sea of spent shell casings. The rest of the movie is told in flashback, starting in 1982 and ending in the completion of the opening scene. The opening credits sequence shows a 7.62x39mm round being produced and going through various stages before getting fired from an AK-47 and travelling through the head of a child soldier during a war in Africa. The song played in the background of the opening credits sequence is "For What It's Worth" performed by Buffalo Springfield.

Through voiceover, Orlov describes how he first became an arms dealer. Yuri and his family came to United States from Soviet Ukraine when he was a young boy. His family pretends to be Jewish for favorable immigration conditions to escape the Soviets, and his father ends up becoming a de facto Orthodox Jew (explaining "I like the hat"). His family owns a restaurant, which Yuri sees as providing a necessity as people have to eat. After Yuri sees a Ukrainian Mafia boss kill two would-be assassins, he decides to provide another necessity: guns. He begins his career by selling Uzis.

Yuri partners up with his brother Vitaly (Jared Leto). Before beginning his career, he approaches Simeon Weisz (Ian Holm), a seasoned arms dealer, at an arms convention in Berlin with a business proposal. Weisz turns him down, dismissing Yuri as an amateur. Weisz also critzices Yuri's greed and political neutrality, noting that it's important to 'picks sides' and tell Yuri "Bullets change governments far surer than votes". When Yuri snarks that Weisz sold weapons to both Iran and Iraq during their 1980-88 war, Weisz asks Yuri if he considered that his goal was for both countries to lose. Yuri develops multiple identities (complete with appropriate paperwork and ID cards) and paperwork in a security container.

As he grows, Yuri (through voiceover) tells of his first incident with Jack Valentine (Ethan Hawke), an Interpol agent who cannot be bought with money. Their first encounter is when Yuri is on the ship Kristol smuggling a shipment of weapons. When he learns that Valentine is on his tail, he changes the name of the ship by having a crew member paint Kono over Kristol , he raises a different flag thanks to Vitaly's quick thinking, and has one of his connections call in a sighting of the Kristol at another location nearby. His first encounter with Jack Valentine plays out in his favor.

During a business deal with a Bolivian drug lord, Yuri is paid in cocaine instead of cash. He argues, but eventually accepts the payment after being shot. Vitaly and he both get high on cocaine, but Vitaly becomes addicted, and Yuri checks him into a rehabilitation center. From that point onward, he conducts his arms business alone.

Shortly afterwards, he begins to court Ava Fontaine (Bridget Moynahan), a model. He books a photo shoot and the entire hotel so that they have the whole area to themselves. After impressing her, they marry, and later have a child named Nikki.

On the day that Nikki begins to walk, the Soviet Union dissolves. Yuri rushes to Ukraine after watching Gorbachev's Christmas Day 1991 resignation speech on television. He contacts his uncle, Dmitri, a general of the former Soviet Army, and begins buying his tanks and AK-47s to expand his inventory, explaining in detail how the AK-47 is the most reliable assault rifle in the world. Weisz comes back and attempts to deal with both Yuri and Dimitri, but is rejected by both. Yuri then gets another visit from Valentine while trying to ship off a Mil Mi-24; fortunately, a young Soviet Army mechanic is able to remove the weapons and because of a loophole in international law that does not classify either of them as weapons of war as long as they are shipped separately, Valentine is forced to let him go. Shortly afterwards, Weisz sets up a car bomb, and Dimitri is assassinated.

Yuri moves on to selling arms to the West African dictator of Liberia, André Baptiste (based on Charles Taylor). Baptiste proclaims that Yuri is a "Lord of War", a verbal play on the term "Warlord", paying him in blood diamonds. After digging through his garbage, Valentine learns that Yuri will be making a cargo run to Sierra Leone. Valentine successfully intercepts the plane, but Yuri makes an emergency landing and gives away all the guns to local villagers before Valentine can detain him. Valentine handcuffs him and keeps him there for 24 hours before being forced to release him.

Yuri makes his way back to Monrovia, where Baptiste invites him to kill the captured Weisz, who simply states he came to Liberia to sell weapons to Baptiste's enemies. Yuri is reluctant, but does not tell Baptiste to stop pulling the trigger until he has done so and murdered Weisz. Weisz later appears in a dream and tells Yuri once again to "take sides".

Valentine keeps Yuri under surveillance, and one day he reveals to Ava that Yuri is a weapons dealer. Ava pleads with Yuri to stop, and he does, instead choosing to exploit the resources of the third world nations. However, he dislikes the business, complaining that the profit margins are low and that there is too much competition compared to illegal arms.

Yuri reenters the arms market when Baptiste approaches him. He is reluctant, but goes when Baptiste tells him that he will pay more than the usual rate. Yuri decides to bring Vitaly along because he is nervous about the current climate of Liberia; however, they later learn that the sale is actually taking place in Sierra Leone. During the transaction, however, Vitaly witnesses a group of villagers beating a mother and her child to death, and tells Yuri the entire village will be massacred if the deal comes through. He pleads with Yuri to stop the transaction, but Yuri says it's not their conflict. Vitaly responds by taking a grenade and blowing up half of the guns. A guard watching the transaction shoots Vitaly to death. Yuri still accepts the deal and all the villagers are then slaughtered.

Yuri ships his brother's body back to the United States with him. He pays someone to remove the lead from Vitaly's body, but one bullet remains and he is stopped by customs. Meanwhile, while being followed by Jack Valentine, Ava finds Yuri's security container, which is definitive proof of Yuri's arms dealing. Ava takes their son and leaves him. When Yuri calls his parents, his mother says, "Both my sons are dead." Valentine detains Yuri and tells him that he has a long jail sentence ahead of him.

However, Yuri reveals to Valentine that the very reasons that Yuri should be incarcerated for are also the same reasons that he'll walk free; his existence is a "necessary evil", as the people he supplies are often "the enemies of your enemies" (enemies of the U.S.) He goes on saying that sometimes the U.S. Government needs a "freelancer" like himself to supply those that they'd rather not be seen supplying. Yuri then predicts that a high-ranking officer will come and free him because of his necessity. Surely enough, a high-ranking officer does indeed come, and Yuri is released.

A free man again, he returns to selling arms. The movie ends by proclaiming on-screen that it is "based on actual events," and that while private arms dealing around the world flourishes, the U.S., the UK, France, Russia and China (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council) are the world's leading arms suppliers.

[edit] War zones featured

[edit] DVD release

The UK DVD release of Lord of War includes, prior to the film, an advert for Amnesty International, showing the AK-47 being sold on a shopping channel of the style popular on cable networks. The American DVD release includes a bonus feature that shows the various weapons used in the movie, allowing viewers to click on each weapon to get statistics about their physical dimensions and histories.

[edit] Reception

[edit] Critical

The film received a 60% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It received a special mention for excellence in filmmaking from the National Board of Review. The Movie House summed up the viewpoint of the film's most enthusiastic admirers by saying, "Lord of War is a great movie. If Martin Scorsese had made GoodFellas about arms dealers rather than Mafiosi, and if Scorsese had a much better sense of humor, he would have made a movie very much like this. I don't know if I can give any filmmaker a better compliment than that." [6]

[edit] Box office

The film grossed $9,390,144 on its opening weekend (2,814 theaters, $3,336 average). After the film's 7-weeks release it grossed a total of $24,149,632 on the domestic market, and $48,467,436 overseas.[7]

[edit] Cast

[edit] References

  1. ^ Viktor Bout: in the Movies...
  2. ^ Bertil Lintner: "A necessary evil"
  3. ^ William Norman Grigg: "Permanent War, Perpetual Profiteering"
  4. ^ On March 6, 2007, Viktor Bout was arrested in Thailand. Amnesty International (2006). "Lord of War". Press release. Retrieved on 2007-09-17.
  5. ^ Hamid, Rahul (Spring 2006). "Lord of War/Syriana". Cineaste 31 (2): 52–55. 
  6. ^ Lord of War by Johnny Web (Greg Wroblewski) (2006) . Retrieved on 2007-12-18. 
  7. ^ Lord of War at Box Office Mojo

[edit] External links

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