The Lord of War is a difficult and unsettling film, the kind that makes you squirm in your seat. This is also the kind of film I admire and the kind of film they say Hollywood doesn’t make anymore. It is an imperfect film but one that should be seen, it may not make you sing when you leave the theater (far from it) but it reminded me of a triple axel at the Olympics, you judge a film like this on it’s degree of difficulty because it is attempting a much more difficult feat than 95% of all films both domestic and foreign.
Nicolas Cage stars as a two-bit arms hustler named Yuri who works his way up the hideous food chain that is arms dealing. His character Yuri turns out to be quite gifted at this hideous profession and he takes us with him as he navigates this terrain through his on-camera and voice-over narration. The character becomes quite slick but the film does a good job of showing that the glibness of the character is in direct proportion to what he is denying to himself: that he is more directly tied to the deaths caused by these weapons than he admits to himself.
The Lord of War traverses the globe as Yuri supplies most of the armed conflicts between 1983 and 2001, which is a good time period as most Americans over 20 will have some knowledge of these very real wars and conflicts. The film serves as a primer to armed conflicts over these years and the nations and players involved. It is no easy task to guide a viewer through a series of twists and turns, trying to educate the viewer while entertaining them. There are attempts at black humor and you find yourself laughing and wincing at Cage’s character as it is so unpleasant to contemplate this life, yet there are many who are presently doing what Yuri does for a living, both individuals and governments.
The second half of the film works better than the first just because the stakes are raised as he begins a family and life begins to unravel, and once you become accustomed to the environment the film can concentrate on the characters instead of feeding the viewer enough information to keep up with the plot.
The Lord of War should be of interest to all liberals because of its subject matter: wars and global conflicts and how they are operated and how they are paid for. It is not pleasant to contemplate what the governments and arms dealers are doing in our world presently but to turn away from this kind of information does no one any good. We fight the urge to know more about this unpleasant subject the same way Yuri resists all attempts at contemplating the results of what he does to make his money and in this aspect the film scores brilliantly. I recommend this film if you are interested in a film that takes you somewhere you haven’t been before and want to learn more about how the modern world works, warts and all.