"A Private Little 'War'"
by Scott Mantz

"Lord of War"
Nicolas Cage, Jared Leto, Ethan Hawke
Directed by Andrew Niccol

Occupational hazard!  Nicolas Cage and Jared Leto go behind enemy lines in "Lord of War"

There’s a crucial scene in writer-director Andrew Niccol’s ambitious political satire “Lord of War” that basically sums up the whole movie.  Third-world arms dealer Yuri Orlov (played with effective gusto by Oscar-winner Nicolas Cage) has never killed a man before, yet here he is, being forced to use one of his own guns to shoot a bound-and-gagged rival right between the eyes.  Making the agonizing, split-second decision to pull the trigger drags on for what seems like an eternity, as Yuri can barely look at the helpless target in his crosshairs.

When the deed is done, Yuri loses his marbles, as if the entire notion of his sleazy profession has finally hit home.  It is a crisis of conscience that has been building for quite some time, and when it hits, it hits big.  Unfortunately, it hits too late in the game, as the moment is preceded by a series of episodic story details that prevent the film from taking a more gripping emotional hold.  “Lord of War” certainly has its moments, but it’s far more fascinating as a loosely based history of third-world conflicts than it is as an engrossing character study about a morally corrupt man.

After witnessing a shoot out between Russian mobsters, Ukrainian-born New Yorker Yuri Orlov convinces his younger brother (Jared Leto) to join him in the business of selling weapons to corrupt regimes on the other side of the world.  It doesn’t take long for them to make a name for themselves, but Yuri has to be on his guard, staying one step ahead of his rivals and the idealistic Interpol agent (Ethan Hawke) who’s hot on his tail.  He also tries to keep his business dealings private from his beautiful wife (Bridget Moynahan) and their young son, but it is only a matter of time before his dual life catches up with him with tragic consequences.

Cage plays Yuri like an aggressive businessman who’s caught up in the ultimate hypocrisy.  He’s happy to reap the benefits of supply and demand, but he has the gall to think of himself as a warlord with a heart – sure, he wants people to buy his weapons, but he sincerely hopes that they miss each other when they shoot.  The paradox begs for a more in-depth analysis of what makes a person like this tick, but the film doesn’t go deep enough, opting instead for scene after scene of Cage playing his war games until their point becomes redundant.

It doesn’t help that most of the relationships are under-developed, particularly the one between Cage and Bridget Moynahan.  She plays his naïve wife who turns a blind eye to his shady business dealings, as long as she can live the good life and pursue her hopeless career as an artist.  The problem is that Moynahan looks and acts way too smart to be so gullible, resulting in a relationship that feels contrived.  Ethan Hawke also seems wasted as the stereotypical fed who wants to take Cage down, while Jared Leto fares a little better as Cage’s strung-out brother and on-again-off-again partner in crime.

After turns behind the camera with 1997’s “Gattaca” and 2002’s “S1m0ne,” Andrew Niccol (who was nominated for an Oscar for writing 1998’s “The Truman Show”) shows some impressive growth as a director, even if the overall results fall somewhat short.  But some scenes are downright spectacular, particularly during the opening credits, where we follow a bullet’s point-of-view from a factory assembly line to its final resting-place inside its intended victim.  And in a later scene, we witness a downed cargo plane get looted and gutted by impoverished African locals in time-lapsed photography.

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