Dir: Andrew Niccol. Starring: Nicolas Cage, Jared Leto, Bridget Moynahan, Ian Holm, Eamonn Walker.
Lord of War is billed as an intelligent blockbuster, but if film poster’s actually told the truth, and removed the words intelligent, and blockbuster, what would you have left? A muddled, mixed effort, of some interest, but a movie that's frustratingly flawed. Which is why of course that posters should never be trusted. As I did this time, alas. Lord of War is stylishly shot, and attempts to be thought provoking, but ultimately it flounders and disappoints.
Nicholas Cage stars as weapons dealer Uri, and the film details his life since the early eighties. Bored of working in his parent's restaurant, and of living in a violence filled New York suburb, after witnessing yet another gang shoot out he decides at the drop of a hat to become an
Initially the film does intrigue, as the morally murky world of arms dealing is shown in bleak detail, but as the film slowly muddles along you'll find yourself becoming more and more frustrated with it. Lord of War attempts to be a Goodfella's style epic, showing the protagonist go from poor, frustrated innocent, to a rich and powerful arms dealer, before his life inevitably falls apart. But the trouble here is that the main character fails to garner any interest or sympathy, or portray him as utterly dislikeable, and when events turn bleak you'll fail to either care or cheer. Cage is a great actor, but he fails to flesh out the role, and his moralising over his life's choices will annoy. He seems remarkably naive for someone responsible for countless deaths, when someone is shot in front of him he's appalled, as if he never realised before that the guns he sells could possibly be used for such a purpose, and when confronted by Interpol, he meekly claims that if he wasn't doing it, someone else inevitably would. This may be partially true, but it's also a pretty poor excuse, akin to that of many a Nazi concentration camp guard, and you'd find it equally as difficult to empathise with such a character as you will with Cage's Uri.
This wouldn't be a problem if he was supposed to be a strongly dislikeable character, but the film tries to make you sympathise with him, tries to make you like him, which becomes impossible when you witness some of the appalling acts he carries out. The best example of this is his involvement in the shooting a rival dealer, where he then goes off the rails, drinks too much and screws strangers. Yet for some reason we're supposed to feel sorry for him. You won't though, you'll just think he's an utter bastard, which the screenplay oddly fails to portray him as. Perhaps it's intentional, perhaps it's meant to make this complex issue even more difficult to understand, but ultimately all it succeeds in doing is making the film a curiously flat affair
At the end of the film titles explain how the film is based on actual events, and how the US is the world's biggest arms dealer, responsible for far more damage to the world than Uri. Whilst that may enrage, like all that has come before, it also frustrates. Ultimately Lord of War fails in being a viewing experience of any real value, and considering the themes it deals with, it really should have been.
Alex Finch.
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