Lord of War

September 17, 2005

Rated: R Runtime: 122 min Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Lord of War is kind of like watching a Discovery channel special except with breasts. The movie itself isn’t sure whether it wants to be drama, action or comedy, and that combined with a lot of narration from Nicolas Cage gives it almost a documentary feel. And it is in fact “based upon actual events”.

Lord of War Cage plays Yuri Orlov, a Russian immigrant who grew up in Brooklyn, but was one of those guys who always dreamed of escaping to the good life. The means he found to do so was to become a gun runner. The story follows him from his first deal to present day as we watch him wheel and deal while trying to lead a double life by not letting his wife know what he does. Oh yeah, and there’s the little problem of an overzealous Interpol agent, played by Ethan Hawke, who would love to put him away for life.

If you’re expecting a war film, this is not it. You’ll see the guns get used here and there, but this is more about the characters involved. There is very little action here. Though they do at least give us a handful of sex scenes and breasts.

The movie exclusively follows Cage’s character and he talks to the audience almost the entire time. But we get to see the double life he leads at home as he goes to a lot of trouble to prevent his wife from knowing what he does. Meanwhile he’s sold guns to “every army except the Salvation Army”, and this provides another interesting cast of characters especially African war lords travelling with gold plated AK-47’s, though they prefer the sound of “lord of war” over “warlord”.

The thing we absolutely hated about the film was the political side. We had the distinct impression they were trying to convince us that guns are bad. We saw kids with guns, and kids getting killed by guns. And the message I think they were trying to sell is that people would quit killing each other if we would quit giving them guns. Someone wasn’t paying attention in history class!

Despite having lots of guns and boobs, we left this film feeling kinda flat. The movie was interesting enough, and the actors did a great job. But the lack of action and seeing the movie perhaps try to do a bit of preaching toward the end of the film is enough to drag it down to only 3 stars.

Posted by Billy Bob | Filed Under 3 Stars, Action, Bridget Moynahan, Drama, Eamonn Walker, Ian Holm, Jared Leto, Nicolas Cage, R, Theatrical