Lord of War

Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage) and Vitali Orlov (Jared Leto) in LORD OF WAR. Photo credit: Garth Stead

Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage) is part of a machinery without a conscience: The arms industry. To illustrate, I think, the soullessness of this machinery, the film opens with a vignette about the birth, life and death of a bullet. You see, from the bullet’s point of view, how it is manufactured, packaged, distributed, and ultimately, used. As with Andrew Niccol’s films, “Gattaca” and “The Truman Show,” Niccol personalizes this message by ending it with the first slap in your face (there are two in this film): The bullet’s life ends as it exits the barrel of an assault rifle and we see a young boy for a brief second just before the bullet’s life, and the boy’s, come to an abrupt end.

This is the truth of the arms trade, but Yuri accepts that, possibly because he doesn’t have to deal with the consequences of his involvement. We learn that Yuri and his brother Vitali (Jared Leto) are Soviet expatriates whose parents adopted the Jewish faith (their father sincerely, while the rest of them not so much). As Yuri notes, this is perhaps one of the only times in history that claiming a Jewish identity helped one to escape persecution. The family opens a restaurant in the community of Little Odessa, in Brighton Beach. After witnessing a mob hit in his neighborhood, Yuri comes to the realization that the real opportunity, for him, is not in the restaurant business.

As Yuri negotiates his way up the ladder of the arms business, he assumes many identities, including one issued a “student visa—but that’s another story.” He rubs shoulders with international arms trader Simeon Weisz (Ian Holm). Weisz deals in arming nations rather than neighborhoods. He brushes Yuri off as inconsequential to his bottom line.

Simultaneously, two other subplots unfold. One involves federal agent Jack Valentine (Ethan Hawke) and the other, model Ava Fontaine (Bridget Moynahan). Valentine knows that Yuri is up to his ears in something bad, but cannot prove it. Fontaine, the object of Yuri’s obsession, has no idea that he sets up an elaborate ruse involving, among other things, a rented car and private jet as yet another false identity employed for the purpose of self-promotion. In this case, the self-promotion is simply to win Fontaine’s heart… and body, of course.

At the same time Yuri is nearly cleaned out from his scheme to win Fontaine’s affection, he engineers a plan with his uncle Dmitri, a Ukranian Army general, to sell gargantuan stockpiles he acquired as a result of the dismantling of the Soviet Union. With this feat, he leapfrogs Weisz and suddenly finds himself negotating arms deals with Andre Baptiste, Sr. (Eamonn Walker), the self-proclaimed President of Liberia. By this time, the South American drug dealer to whom Yuri and Vitali sell guns earlier in the film (and thanks to whom Vitali develops an unhealthy obsession with Colombia’s primary export) seems like a relatively straightforward kind of guy.

I don’t know what it is about Nicolas Cage. His voice has that shuffle-pace that, as cliché as it is, running narration seems not only warranted but inevitable. Through the narrations about the logistics of the arms trade, the small nations stricken with poverty and disesase, usurped by warlords, we get the sense that the director, Niccol, is actually conveying to us some hard facts—which resurface later to slap us in the face.

Yuri’s narration tells us another thing. He is coldly aware of these numerous and sordid facts about the arms trade, and unconcerned with them—or is he? Throughout the film, he pushes himself and those around him nearer and nearer to harm. He repeats that he is not concerned with the end result. It’s not his business. Anyone who rationalizes their actions that much is, above all else, trying to convince themselves.

Where Niccol slips, however, is in the ability to convince us without hamfisting the message in contrivances that run at angles oblique to the semi-comical attitude of Orlov, at least until the third act when Yuri’s life begins to speed downhill in fifth gear. In “The Truman Show,” humor was in its element because as Truman Burbank, who has no outside frame of reference but the fabricated world in which he is incubated, Jim Carrey cannot help but observe, with a cocked eyebrow, the peculiarity of it all as the paint of the facade begins to peel around him.

In “Gattaca”, again, Ethan Hawke plays off of such actors as Jude Law, Gore Vidal, Tony Shalhoub and even Ernest Borgnine, to demonstrate irony—either couched somewhere in the dialogue or within their actions. However, here Cage presents Yuri as a point-counterpoint unto himself, and that makes it a bit uneven at times. All the same, there are some people who, even when their conscience seems to grip them, give you that sense it’s more out of instinct for self-preservation than it is altruism.

In that regard, (NOTE: possible spoilers ahead) Cage gets it just about right: The disaffected salesman who remains disaffected, but his instinct for self-preservation forces him to contemplate whether or not he has a conscience. I find that more believable than someone who magically undergoes a complete psychological and moral transformation. We are who we are, and that doesn’t really change, even if our motivations might. At one point, rationalizing his actions, Yuri explains, “Because I’m good at it.” One gets the feeling that through the entire film, this is the only genuine explanation for Yuri’s choices.

Perhaps I’m being a bit critical because, and especially because, I expect quite a lot from the director of two of the most introspective films I’ve seen. I could be convinced more easily on the facts of the arms trade alone, without being reminded, rather heavily and repeatedly, the effect it has on the young and innocent. However, I guess those emotional contrivances that seem emphasized for the convenience of drama are hard to step away from when you’re dealing with the story of a man like Orlov, who needs to be confronted by that reality until he truly comprehends it. I know that it’s not the kind of film that’s going to stick with me as long as Niccol’s other works have. Yet, I greatly appreciate this film, and the fact that there are directors who are willing to make unconventional films which, as Roger Ebert wrote of “The Truman Show,” invite us to think about the implications.

Lord of War • Running Time: 2 hours 2 minutes • Dolby® Digital surround sound in select theatres • MPAA Rating: R for strong violence, drug use, language and sexuality. • Distributed by Lions Gate Films