SYNOPSIS

LORD OF WAR is an action adventure story set in the world of international arms dealing.

The film, based on fact, follows the globetrotting exploits of arms dealer Yuri Orlov (NICOLAS CAGE). Through some of the deadliest war zones, Yuri struggles to stay one step ahead of a relentless Interpol agent (ETHAN HAWKE), his business rivals, even some of his customers who include many of the world's most notorious dictators. Finally, Yuri must also face his own conscience.

Review by
DARREL MANSON

As Lord of War opens, Yuri Orlov tells us that there are enough guns in the world to arm one out of every twelve people on the planet. He wants to get guns to the other eleven.

That is because Orlov is a gunrunner. He supplies weapons to armies and rebels, to despots and freedom fighters, drug lords and war lords. He doesn’t care who he sells them to. He knows if he doesn’t sell them, someone else will. He’s good at what he does. He knows who to bribe. He knows how to falsify documents so that everything seems legal.

The film is a rather preachy look at the level of armaments in the world and at the geopolitics that drive the gun trade. Munitions are indeed big business, both legal and illegal (and often somewhere in between). Governments are the largest suppliers of weapons. (The film notes that the five members of the UN Security Council are the largest dealers.) There are private dealers such as is portrayed in Orlov to fill in the gaps where governments don’t want to be involved or be seen as being involved.

The film follows the life of a fictional gun trafficker through twenty years – beginning when there was still a Cold War. Seeing a gang shoot out in a New York restaurant, he has an epiphany that providing weapons is an unending business. He also figures that the margins on supplying street guns are too small. So he starts making surreptitious deals to obtain tons of weapons left behind by the military because it is cheaper to order new ordinance than to ship it all home. His business grows and he becomes a purveyor of every kind of weapon.

When the Cold War ends he immediately goes to the Ukraine to buy up the vast stores of weapons of the former Soviet Union that are now without supervision. He even buys attack helicopters. He is the middle man that manages to get all these weapons from countries all over the world to those places where death is dealt daily by those in power or seeking power. In the film, we see this happening especially in West Africa. The gun trade certainly is an important factor in the genocides that have taken place in Africa, as it was in Eastern Europe earlier.

For the most part, Orlov is utterly amoral. He doesn’t think about what the weapons will be used for. To think of such things might compromise him. In stead, he focuses only on the deal. He has built an emotional wall that keeps the obvious use of these weapons at bay. He doesn’t necessarily like the people he deals with, but if they are going to be getting weapons anyway, he should get his share out of the deal. He also doesn’t think about where the money comes from. Much of the arms trade in Africa is financed by conflict diamonds, which Orlov readily takes as payment.

Yet, there is a bit of morality that creeps into his life. He doesn’t tell his wife (in many ways bought by the money he’s made in weapons trafficking) what he does, and she doesn’t ask – nor does she ask how he can buy her 18 carat diamond earrings. There are times when he’s confronted with what the weapons are used for. He doesn’t really want to be part of the death and killing, but he can’t quite keep himself blood-free. But in the end, even though it has cost him everyone who matters to him, he stays at it.

Perhaps the world, like his wife, should ask what’s going on. Perhaps that is what this film is trying to do. It certainly wants us to see all the death that plagues many nations because so many weapons are readily available. It isn’t the guns alone that bring all this death. We see a woman and child hacked to death with machetes – the people who are going to kill will do so with or without the guns. But the wide open arms trade certainly facilitates the killing that takes place on such a broad scale.

One of the problems with the film is that it is so preachy. To be sure, the issues raised are important and need to be addressed. This film seeks to shame us for allowing such things to go on, but without offering any alternative or action that we can do to bring about change. It is cynical in the sense of offering no hope. It seems to have given up on a world where there is so much killing and so few people who seem to care.