Susan Granger’s review of “Lord of War” (Lions Gate Entertainment)
Satire runs rampant in Andrew Niccol’s action-adventure about global arms trading, as the opening scene follows a bullet’s trajectory – from its manufacture into an African boy’s brain.
According to the observations of its conscience-stricken narrator/hero, Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage), there’s an international conspiracy to get guns and ammo into those regions of the world where they will do the most harm. And Yuri should know. By pretending to be Jewish, his family emigrated to Little Odessa in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, from Soviet-controlled Ukraine when he was a boy and opened a kosher restaurant. Realizing that there was a lucrative living to be made in weapons, he and his brother Vitaly (Jared Leto) grew up to be gun-runners. With neither principles nor scruples – which differentiated him from a rival, old-school arms dealer, Simeon Weisz (Ian Holm) – Yuri had no trouble dealing with and delivering firearms to the world’s most despicable warlords and despots, nor eluding a persistent Interpol agent (Ethan Hawke).
Writer/director Andrew Niccol (“Gattaca,” “The Truman Show”) claims that the story is based on actual events and that Yuri Orlov is actually a composite of five real-life arms dealers. With photographer Amir Mokri and editor Zach Staenberg, he evokes the same kind of relevant social commentary engendered by Michael Mann’s righteous “The Insider,” peppered with an ironic political humor reminiscent of Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22.” Problem is: Niccol tackles too much, which dilutes his effectiveness. Versatile Nicolas Cage is charismatic and totally convincing as the suave, morally conflicted anti-hero with Bridget Moynahan as his trophy wife. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Lord of War” is a cynical 7, revealing “a necessary evil.”
