Lord of War
Lord of War | |
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Lord of War film poster |
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Directed by | Andrew Niccol |
Produced by | Nicolas Cage, Chris Roberts, |
Written by | Andrew Niccol |
Starring | Nicolas Cage Bridget Moynahan Ethan Hawke Jared Leto Ian Holm |
Distributed by | Lions Gate Films |
Release date(s) | 16 September 2005 |
Running time | 122 mins |
Country | USA |
Language | English, Ukrainian |
Budget | ~ US$42,000,000/pl |
Gross revenue | Domestic: $24,149,632 Worldwide: $72,617,068 |
All Movie Guide profile | |
IMDb profile |
Lord of War is a 2005 film written and directed by Andrew Niccol and starring Nicolas Cage. It was released in the United States on September 16, 2005, with the DVD following on January 17, 2006 and the Blu-ray Disc on July 27, 2006. Cage plays the antiheroic protagonist, an illegal arms dealer with similarities to Russian arms dealers Viktor Bout and Leonid Minin. The film was officially endorsed by the human rights group Amnesty International for highlighting the trafficking of weapons by the international arms industry.[1][2]
Contents |
Plot
The movie begins with Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage) (no relation to Yuri Orlov who is a human rights activist in real life), standing in a sea of spent shell casings. He then turns to the camera, smiles and matter-of-factly states: "There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That's one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is: How do you arm the other eleven?" The opening credits follow the life of a 7.62×39 mm cartridge: from a munitions assembly line in Odessa, Ukraine, to various arms dealing intermediaries, to an African conflict, and ending in the head of a young African boy, via the barrel of an AK-47.
The rest of the movie is told in flashback, starting in 1982 and ending in the completion of the opening scene.
Through voiceover, Yuri Orlov describes how he first became an arms dealer. Yuri and his family came to United States from Ukraine when he was a young boy. They live in "Little Odessa", a Russian community in Brooklyn in New York City. His family pretends to be Jewish for favorable immigration conditions to escape the Soviets. His family owns a restaurant, which is useful, "because people are always going to have to eat," and his brother Vitaly is the chef. After Yuri sees a Russian Mafia boss kill two would-be assassins, he decides to provide another necessity: guns. He then goes to temple with his father, and meets Eli, his first supplier. He makes his first sell, an Israeli-made Micro Uzi, in a motel room to two men.
Yuri then partners up with his brother Vitaly (Jared Leto), but it's obvious that Vitaly has moral issues about it. Before beginning his career in earnest, he approaches Simeon Weisz (Ian Holm), a seasoned arms dealer, at an arms convention with a business proposal. Weisz turns him down, dismissing Yuri as an amateur. He tells Yuri that he doesn't just sell guns, he takes sides in wars; Yuri seems confused about it because Simeon had sold weapons to both sides in the Iraq-Iran war, Simeon tells him that he wanted both sides to lose. Yuri keeps his multiple identities and paperwork in a security container. He starts small and begins selling Israeli Uzis and M-16 rifles that the US military left behind from the 1982 Lebanon War. He sells to both sides of the war; Israeli made guns to Muslim buyers, he sells Communist made bullets to Fascist, and he doesn't take sides. He said he didn't sell to Osama Bin Laden though, not for any moral reasons, but because back then his checks always bounced. He bribes the US military to turn a blind eye to the sale of their old weapons,shown by a general called Gen. Southerland. The general's face is never seen, but his medals and ranks are, and Yuri says that the bribes are for their own "personal wars". As he grows, Yuri (through voiceover) tells of his second incident with Jack Valentine (Ethan Hawke), an Interpol agent who cannot be bought with money, a rare kind of law enforcement officer, as Yuri states, "Even though he knew I was breaking the law, he wouldn't break the law himself..." Their first encounter in the movie is when Yuri is on the ship Kristol smuggling a shipment of weapons, including AK-47s. He gets a call stating that the authorities have been tipped off; Yuri changes the ship name to the Kono (the name of a diamond rich province in Sierra Leone), and uses a French flag turned sideways to seem like a Dutch flag, and the first encounter with Jack Valentine smoothly plays out in Yuri's favor. Yuri is shown to be a very smart man, speaking several languages fluently, and knowing a lot about the political and economical world.
The murders that these weapons produces are starting to have its effect on Vitaly. After one of their transactions, Yuri and Vitaly ducks behind a stone wall after machine guns are firing through the walls. Vitaly looks through a gap in the wall, and he sees a militia solider lining up a young boy to be executed. He thinks about shooting at the solider, but then Yuri stops him and tells him that it's not their fight. During his latest business deal with a Bolivian drug lord, Yuri is paid in cocaine instead of cash. The customer tells Yuri when he objects, that the cocaine is better than money because he can sell it for twice what he's asking for, but Yuri says he doesn't want it, and is shot in the heated exchange. He hastily agrees to the deal and leaves in a taxi with the load of cocaine. Vitaly is unsure of what to do next and asks Yuri what to do. Yuri answers by saying "We celebrate." They both end up snorting cocaine, but Vitaly becomes addicted, and Yuri takes him to a rehabilitation center. Yuri says that the customer was right, that he did get more than what he asked for the price of the weapons out of the cocaine, when he re-sold it. From then on, Yuri's business is a one man show when his brother checked into rehab. Shortly after this episode, he begins to court Ava Fontaine (Bridget Moynahan), who is shown in the beginning of the movie as "Miss Long Island" during a parade. She's now a model, and Yuri spends money that's out of his financial limits to meet her. He buys a fake photo shoot for her to take in St. Bart, where he's basically bought out the whole resort, so that it's just him and her. On his supposed jet (he had rent it, and then had one of the crew members paint his name on the side of it), he pretends that he doesn't know who she is, and then feigns surprise when he's looking at a magazine and sees her on it. Afterwards they're talking, and he tells her that he's from Brooklyn, and she tells him that she's from Williamsburg (a neighborhood in Brooklyn). They eventually marry, and on their wedding day, Ava is looking at a bracelet locket that has the pictures of her mother and father in them. She tells Yuri that she knows he's not as he appears to be, or all that he says he is, but she tells him that she won't ask a lot of questions, and for the most part she turns a blind eye to everything until she's force to face it. They move into an apartment in Central Park West, Manhattan and later have a son, Nikki. Ava pursues several other careers afterwards, an actress, and an artist (Yuri was the only one to buy one of her paintings, and he did it secretly), but they do not succeed well. Vitaly goes in and out of rehab, but every time he goes in again, Yuri gives him one last line to snort before he enters into the rehab center. During Christmas, Vitaly brings over a girl who appears to be a druggie, and Yuri kicks her out of his apartment after giving her some money before slamming the door on her. When Yuri and Vitaly are in the kitchen, he asks Yuri if Ava knows about what he does, and Yuri tells him that she doesn't ask any questions. Then Yuri asks Vitaly "why", and he keeps on repeating it over and over again. He's referring to why Vitaly is hooked on the cocaine, and Vitaly tells him that he doesn't know himself.
His business is still relatively small, but Yuri gets his big break when the Soviet Union dissolves. Yuri rushes to Ukraine after watching Gorbachev's Christmas Day 1991 resignation speech on television. He contacts his uncle, Dmitri, ("He was almost permanently shitfaced" Yuri says) a general of the former Soviet Army, and begins buying his tanks and AK-47s to expand his inventory. However, Yuri is not the only dealer trying to cash in. Weisz, falling on hard times now that the Soviet Union has fallen, tries to strike a deal with Yuri and Dmitri, but is rejected by both men; Yuri, because of his earlier insult to him about being an "amateur"; and by Dmitri because he's loyal, and his loyalty can't be bought. Soon afterwards, Yuri has another experience with Agent Valentine while trying to export a military helicopter (Soviet made Hind-A). Fortunately, a young Soviet Army mechanic is able to remove the Hind's rockets just before Valentine arrives and he is forced to let Yuri go again (because of a loophole that weapons and helicopter, when shipped separately, comply with Interpol's trade standards and practices).
Dmitri is assassinated by a car bomb that was really meant for Yuri, compliments of Weisz. Yuri moves on to selling arms to the West African dictator of Liberia, André Baptiste. Baptiste, pleased with the relationship, proclaims that Yuri is a "Lord of War" (a mistaken translation of warlord), and he tells them that he doesn't have any money, but that he has "stones". He displays his way of payment on the table before Yuri, and they are pure diamonds from Africa (referred to as "blood diamonds" because, the narration states, they are so often used to pay for weapons of war). Meanwhile, Jack Valentine continues his pursuit of Yuri, confident that he will eventually slip up. He doggedly searches the garbage of the Orlov household, where Ava notices him and his men from the apartment window. She calls Yuri, and he tells her it's nothing, and she accepts it, although she doesn't believe it. After painstakingly reconstructing a dumpster full of Yuri's shredded documents, Valentine discovers that Yuri will soon be making a cargo run to Sierra Leone. Valentine intercepts Yuri's cargo plane. Yuri instructs the pilot to land the plane on a dirt road in a village, knowing the fighter jet pursuing him will not be able to land there. The plane lands safely and to destroy the evidence, he gives the entire arms shipment away to the African villagers. When Jack Valentine finally arrives, Yuri (through voiceover) states, "You could find more guns on a plane full of Quakers". Jack deliberately keeps Yuri detained for twenty-four hours (the longest detention allowed without charge), before he is forced to release him. Yuri is left unguarded outside the plane with handcuffs on and watches as the locals strip the plane down to pieces for its part. On one of Yuri's vists with Baptiste, he tells Yuri that people are hyprocrites because they accuse him of rigging his electional votes in a third-world place like Africa, but then he shows Yuri a front page newspaper about the 2000 presidential elections in the United States, between Al Gore and George Bush, where there was controversy in the state of Florida for its voting ballots, (Bush's brother was the governor of the state of Florida).
By now, Yuri has established a very good relationship with André Baptiste, but is horrified when Baptiste captures Weisz as a "gift." Baptiste invites Yuri to kill Weisz. When Yuri refuses, Baptiste puts the gun in his hand while slowly pulling the trigger himself. Yuri is invited to say "stop" at any time, but only says it after the shot. After Yuri does not prevent the death of Weisz, he goes to a hotel and bar, courtesy of Baptiste, and talks with the bartender. The bartender offers Yuri a sniff of "brown-brown", a combination of gunpowder and cocaine. After sniffing the brown-brown, Yuri goes through the town, obviously delusional. He is confronted by a one-armed girl, a hallucination of Weisz, and two guards. He starts coming out of his high, when he sees an African prostitute on top of him, taking out the money from his wallet. He doesn't care about that, but he's concern whether or not they've had sex, as he has rejected two very attractive African girls earlier because of a fear of AIDS. The prostitute speaks French, and Yuri asks her in French if she has AIDS, but she leaves without answering.
Jack keeps Yuri under surveillance, and one day he reveals to Ava that Yuri is a weapons dealer. At first, she continues to turn a blind eye, but then Valentine hits home when he puts a newspaper clipping about the home invasion murder of her parents. He tells Ava that her parents were killed by weapons supplied to the attackers by men like her husband. Ava confronts Yuri about his business; he promises that he will stop. He starts to make legal deals to exploit the resources of poor nations, but complains that the margins are low and competition is high. Six months later, Baptiste and his son come over and visit Yuri (on their way to United Nations headquarters for peace talks). They want to see Yuri however, to get more weapon supplies, and when Yuri tells them that he's legit now, Baptiste wins him over with a very large diamond. Yuri takes Vitaly along on the deal, because he doesn't trust anyone. Vitaly tells him that he's clean now, and he has a girlfriend, but Yuri manages to convince Vitaly to come along. The buyers are in Sierra Leone, where Baptiste hopes to assist the violent rebels of the Revolutionary United Front. However, during the deal, Vitaly becomes distressed: he sees men kill a mother and child in a nearby village of unarmed civilians and tells Yuri that their customers will kill all the villagers as soon as Yuri sells the weapons. He pleads with Yuri to cancel the shipment. Yuri tells him again that it's not their fight, and tries to convince him that someone else will sell the weapons if they do not; he also argues that both of them will be killed if they try to cancel the deal. Vitaly pretends to agree. However, he then takes two grenades, destroys half of Yuri's shipments, and kills Baptiste's son before nearby guards kill him. Yuri only receives half of the diamond payment due to the destruction of the weapons, and although he's upset about his brother's death, he continues with his business.
Yuri ships his brother's body back to the United States with him. He pays a Monrovian doctor 20 dollars to remove the lead from Vitaly's body and forge a death certificate, but one bullet remains, and Yuri is stopped by customs. Meanwhile, while being followed by Jack Valentine, Ava finds Yuri's security container, finally establishing the definitive proof of Yuri's guilt. Ava takes their son and leaves him. When Yuri calls his parents, his mother says, "Both my sons are dead", letting him know that he's disowned by them now. Valentine detains Yuri and tells him that he has a long jail sentence ahead of him, but Yuri asks him for the newspaper that he has, and he flips through it nonchalantly. He then proclaims himself as a "necessary evil," as he points out to newspaper articles about assassinations in the Middle East. He then tells Valentine that soon there will be a knock on the door, and that a higher ranking person will congratulate him, and he'll get a promotion, but then Valentine will be ordered to release him because one of his customers is the president himself; and it would be very embarrassing to have the president's fingerprints on one of his sold guns. Yuri also explains that the president sells more merchandise in a day than he does in a year, suggesting about the United States own involvement in selling weapons to war-inflicted countries. Yuri is released by a high ranking United States military officer named "Colonel Oliver Southern", a pun on the name of real-life Col. Oliver North.
A free man again, and without his family, he returns to selling arms without guilt. The movie ends by proclaiming on-screen that it is "based on actual events" and that, while arms traders like Yuri Orlov continue to thrive, the U.S., the UK, France, Russia and China (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council) are the world's leading arms suppliers.
DVD Release
The UK DVD release of Lord of War includes, prior to the film, an advert for Amnesty International, showing the AK-47 being sold on a shopping channel of the style popular on cable networks.
Reception
Critical
The film received a 61% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and although it was praised by many critics, the film only received a special mention for excellence in filmmaking from the National Board of Review.
Box office
The film grossed $9,390,144 on its opening weekend (2,814 theaters, $3,336 average). After the film's 7-weeks release it grossed a total of $24,149,632 on the domestic market, and $48,467,436 overseas.[3] Considering the film's $50 million budget, the film was a moderate box office success.
Cast
- Nicolas Cage – Yuri Orlov
- Bridget Moynahan – Ava Fontaine Orlov
- Jared Leto – Vitaly Orlov
- Ethan Hawke – Jack Valentine
- Eamonn Walker – André Baptiste Sr.
- – André Baptiste Jr.
- Ian Holm – Simeon Weisz
References
- ^ Amnesty International (2006). Lord of War. Press release. Retrieved on 2007-09-17.
- ^ Hamid, Rahul (Spring 2006). "Lord of War/Syriana". Cineaste 31 (2): 52-55. Retrieved on 2007-09-17.
- ^ Lord of War at Box Office Mojo