The Lord of War Prefers it That Way (2005)

Today I knocked another Cage movie off my list. This time I picked Lord of War. I was in the mood for a Nicolas Cage action movie and I knew this had a lot of guns in it. Well, turns out this isn't an action movie, but it sure did have a lot of guns. Oh well, 2 out of 3 isn't too bad. This time around Cage plays Yuri Orlov, a gun runner who is constantly being chased by Ethan Hawke's character Jack Valentine. So long as he's smart, he can always stay just a few steps ahead of the long arm of the law's reach. Continue after the jump for more.


Besides what I've already covered in the intro, there's not much of a plot here. Even Ethan Hawke doesn't show up until fairly late in the movie, and he only pops up briefly when he does. This is more a story of how Yuri Orlov becomes a world known gun runner and smuggler, and just kind of shows him buying off a lot of officials and boarder guards to get wherever he wants. The more interesting parts of the movie are indeed when Ethan Hawke shows up. As short as they are though, they're usually the few parts that bring tension to the movie.

This is a pretty tense moment, too bad it only lasts a few seconds.

I'd say Nicolas Cage does an alright job at portraying this character, the problem is that I found Yuri Orlov to be kinda dull. He's just a business man at the end of the day, who happens to sell guns. There's a pretty weak storyline about his brother being a drug addict, but that just sort of goes away part way through the movie. If ever there's a problem, he simply throws more money at it and the problem generally just goes away or works out in his favor.

Lord of War however does pack quite a powerful message about firearms and where they go. Yuri often proclaims that what happens after he sells the weapons is none of his business. Generally he's a nice guy, but there's no denying that he is the bad guy of this movie. He deals in death, and the more the better. The movie does that role reversal thing though where you sort of cheer on the bad guy. Especially when he's often surrounded by even worse men who take joy in killing.

Need any guns?

There's never really any action, this isn't an action movie after all. Most of the intrigue comes from the political drama of the weapons deals and the short bursts of tension with the law when Jack Valentine shows up. There's quite a lot of character work done for Yuri Orlov, but not really much for anyone else. Another unfortunate thing is the amount of voice-over narration in the film. There's a lot, and it's not usually that interesting, unlike in Adaptation where it works.

In the end I simply found Lord of War to be an OK movie. A good message about the evils of war, some moments of good cat-and-mouse with the law, but a lot of hollow feeling characters and too much voice-over. I wouldn't classify it as a bad movie, but it just left me with a very lukewarm opinion of it. Check it out if you like more serious films or if the concept of gun smuggling and illegal backroom weapons deals sounds interesting to you. If it does, you'll probably really like Lord of War.