Lord of War
(New on Video)

By Jim Castagnera
Special to The History Place
1/25/06

This satirical treatment of a global pestilence, released this week in video stores nationally, opens with arms dealer Yuri Orlov (Nicholas Cage) telling the camera, "There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That's one firearm for every 12 people on the planet. The only question is… How do we arm the other eleven?"

There follows one of the most interesting title sequences I've seen in years. Behind the names of the distinguished cast --- Cage, Jared Leto, Ethan Hawk, Ian Holm --- the biography of a bullet unrolls, from its manufacture, through transshipment, into the magazine of a Kalashnikov, and finally into the forehead of a young African. To call this 2005 film 'hard hitting' would be a gross understatement.

To call it a black comedy might be closer to the truth. The protagonist's name will resonate with Cold War history buffs. The real Yuri Orlov was a respected Soviet physicist and human rights activist. Cage's character starts life on the streets of "Little Odessa," a New York neighborhood populated by Ukrainian refugees and plagued by Russian gangsters. To attain refugee status and emigrate to the U.S., Yuri's family faked a Jewish background. We meet them running a Jewish deli. Yuri's father is so far into this farce that he dresses in black like an Orthodox Jew and attends temple daily.

Yuri's conversion is more sudden and dramatic. Like Saul on the road to Damascus, he is called to his vocation in a blinding flash… not of lightening, but of gunfire. Inadvertently stumbling into the middle of a gangland hit in a local restaurant, he realizes in an instant that firearms, like food, are an essential commodity. Within weeks of this peculiar revelation, he does his first deal and discovers that he's really good at it.

On the film's gory, yet devil-may-care, up side, Yuri wins the girl of his dreams -- a Ukrainian-American super model -- and keeps her (and himself and the rest of his family) in the style to which she wants to become accustomed. Bits of the first half of the flick foreshadow things to come: two Lebanese boys positioned in front of a firing squad armed by Yuri and his brother (Leto), while they watch helplessly from behind a wall… the odd 'bod' strewn in the path of Yuri's tasseled Guccis.

The film truly turns from gray to black when a Latin American deal nearly goes, well, south. The buyer wants to pay in cocaine. The Orlovs protest. Yuri winds up wounded. And before the boys are back in New York, Vitaly Orlov is hopelessly hooked on the white powder. He spends most of the remainder of the movie ricocheting back and forth between rehab houses and the arms of happy hookers. Meanwhile, Yuri's best customer becomes a brutal Liberian warlord modeled after Charles Taylor. Once this marriage is made in hell, the satire makes way for the film's cynical message: people are going to kill each other no matter what we do. So if your talent lies in the direction of gun-running, then go get 'em. As Yuri tells the Interpol policeman (Hawke) who pursues him relentlessly, "The president of the United States is the biggest arms dealer in the world. But there are some places even he can't go. That's where I come in."

When the film appeared in theaters last year, Amnesty International endorsed it, saying it was "proud to announce its support of… a film… that illustrates the deadly impact of the uncontrolled global arms trade." Lord of War does indeed do that. But its message is so cynical, its conclusion so hopeless, that one wonders what reaction -- or action -- its makers hoped to inspire.

Rated R - For strong violence, drug use, language and sexual content.

Jim Castagnera, a Philadelphia journalist and lawyer, is the Associate Provost at Rider University and author of the weekly newspaper column Attorney at Large.

Lord of War - Official Website
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