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A wily arms dealer (Nicolas Cage) dodges bullets and betrayal as he schemes his way to the top of his profession, only to come face to face with his conscience. But it's not easy to leave a life of girls, guns and glamour when nobody wants you to stop, not even your enemies.

??

"Part 1, 2, or 3?"

Been looking forward to this movie for a while now...

Andrew Nicoll writing and directing - he previously wrote/directed Gattaca and S1m0ne (both very underrated IMO), and wrote The Truman Show and The Terminal. I love his films (Terminal not so much)... he has a mindset and style similar to that of Phillip K Dick (without the action scenes) and I liken him to Charlie Kauffman in terms of his bizzare stories and ideas.

saw it today, thought it was pretty good. I think it might move a bit slow for some people which may seem odd for a movie about a gun runner. But its really a narrative about a gun runner more then an action packed adventure. But I did enjoy it.

I enjoyed Gattaca a lot, excellent film. Have been looking forwards to Lord of War since I saw the trailer, looks rather good.

i going check the movie out morrow

its pretty good

Love Gattaca......Lord of War looked poor, but this is making me rethink that. Perhaps Ill check it out now.

I dont like the look of this film

Firs Time I don't see one of thoes Hollywood 555 numbers...

Valintino's Card has his number (514) 658 1157 ... or Something Liek That... 514 is my area code... I'll be calling this guy up... bet he / she speaks French.. Hopefully they are on WellFare and Threten to sue the Writter Director... but scince theya re Quebecer they will probly sue.. The movie... Anyways that be fun to see... If it even happens.. Becasue I can tell myself "ya... I made that happen"

Firstly, I have to apologise for the lateness of my comments on this movie. I'd been avoiding it actually, I don't like Cage much and the title seemed uninspiring. Nonetheless after months of holding off, and not finding anything apparently more interesting to watch, I decided on the recommendation of a friend that it was "worth seeing" to give it a peep.

It's those little decisions in life, that aren't necessarily more consequential, but seem that way when we reflect upon their seeming insignificance.

Unfortunately I don't want to comment on the mechanical side of the movie at all. I feel that in that sense there's not much to the movie really.

It's all narrative, nicely directed, with relatively simple symbolism and a running satire that leads to, (what I found to be) at times, outrageous dark humor or satire made even more so by its juxtaposition to a theme that is, for lack of a better word, grave. The sound track is well thought out with themes hinting at the direction our thoughts should take as we watch the related scenes.

But to focus on the mechanical details of this movie would be nearly meaningless, Hitler's autopsy and not his life, if you'll allow the crudeness of the analogy.

Like all good movies, this one spells out its entire arc at the very beginning. In the first scene, we follow a carpet of spent bullet casings to the back of a suited man, standing before some desolate burnt-out-and-still-smoking war-torn nightmare of a scene with telephone poles and lines curiously still intact (symbolism? maybe(not)). The man (Cage) is suited, with a brief case(?) and business looking, he turns and begins to quote those hard-hitting facts that you hear in some report sponsored by some ad-council or other.

Every day, millions die, X amount of guns being shipped around the world, blah blah blah. And just as I begin to tune out, I hear the last sentence over again "...that's one gun for every 12 people on the planet, the question is how to arm the remaining 11".

Cage's rhetoric reveals the first major theme of the movie: satire, shocking satire revealing the underlying thought of someone somewhere (who and where will be discussed later).

Satire, an amazing weapon, has the unique power of at once, laying bare undercurrents in thoughts, behaviour, and society, irrefutably proving their existence, and instantly debunking them by laying bare their naked horror and causing, or encouraging us to make arguments ourselves that counter their fractured reasoning, no argument being more convincing than the one we ourselves make.

The movie doesn't attempt to do an expose, doesn't attempt to point the finger, doesn't attempt to apologise no, it gloats. It stares into the face of ongoing global disaster willfully brought about by the soulless Uri Orlov (Cage's character) and points out where profits were made, and what could have been done to better orchestrate that disaster.

This cold, fact-of-the-matter narrative is the perfect approach to this sort of movie. There's no way to get to people any more, you can't preach, you can't persuade, you can't guilt trip, agnosticism and revisionist histories have made everyone immune. Instead, the horror of the reality is exposed through the jaded and cynic narrative of the villain. The story of a man who looked about his dead-end life and took the only sure bet, a wholesale investment in evil.

I suppose an accurate comparison would be Cusack's ongoing narrative in "Grosse Pointe Blank", only imagine that Cusack's character is real...

This satire returns again and again, in Orlov's rationalising to himself and others only as we go on it changes from satire to horrifying reality, which brings us to the movie's second theme.

Accountability. No, not responsibility (the two words are so often confused, one having completely to do with the past, and the other the future). The second scene of the movie(?) follows a bullet from it's production in what I assume is the United States, step by step, to its eventual violent entry into the skull of a young boy who can only watch its approach with a kind of maligned misunderstanding in his eyes.

*A note here, I've seen other reviews refer to this boy as a young warrior, but I don't recall him being armed. I believe he's more filling the role of the faceless victim, given a face here momentarily to drive the point home.

The movie essentially attempts to put the smoking gun in the hand of the manufacturer, and the salesperson. Orlov argues that "Car salesmen and Cigarette salesmen do the same thing, selling products that have a high chance of leading to the death of their buyers, only his comes with a safety switch."

--Leaving it up to the discerning viewer to counter his rationale with the reasoning that "even ladders sometimes lead to the death of their owners, but of all these products only guns are designed (and solely designed) to kill. AND opening up the curious argument...one would jail a person like Orlov, one would argue irrefutably that he is evil but what about the gun manufacturer, what about the "legal" salesperson?

The movie attempts to erase Orlov's reasoning, that if he supply the weapons and ammunition but doesn't actually pull the trigger, he's not responsible. You poison the river, but don't actually give the water from it to someone to drink...

At one point one of Orlov's "clients" actually puts his hand on the gun and pulls the trigger, forcing him to face the reality that he deals in death, causing Orlov to hit what he considers to be moral rock-bottom, where as a result he does drugs (hard, freaky drugs), courts suicide (in a way) and *groan* sleeps with a black woman (okay, okay, a whore who happens to be black--I mean whores appear before in the movie but when they're European is Orlov isn't concerned about disease but then they're so-called first-world whores...whatever--okay we'll just leave that there).

Here, in another of the movies frequent ventures into symbolism Orlov is confronted by wild hyenas(?) who growl, sniff, and leave him be (why would they harm one of their own, after all).

Which brings us to the final theme, morality. Again, in avoiding becoming preachy, the movie must take the long route to morality, developing it in four characters. Orlov himself, representing the amoral, his brother who represents Orlov's morality and true morality, Jack Valentine, the 'dogged agent' representing blind morality and Orlov's wife, representing one who avoids morality by feigning (or 'choosing)ignorance.

This truly is the heart and soul of the movie, the path of these four characters show four stances on the current state of global affairs with gun running as the issue.

Orlov takes a stance of complete amorality(and atheism), believing that the issue has nothing to do with him, there's a profit to be made and he just happens to be the one making it, this brings him long life(invincibility even), success, unbelievable wealth, the woman of his dreams, and all only at the cost of his soul and everyone he loves.

His brother knows by instinct what he is doing is wrong but goes along with it anyway, he pays for his sin with his life in an attempt to right his wrongs.

His wife ignores, at first, the situation, choosing to enjoy the luxuries Orlov's secret endeavours bring her and live the lie, but when confronted with the reality chooses to expose him (not out of concern for those harmed, but for her own moral sanctity).

Finally, Valentine dogs Orlov's heels, all the while spewing justice and high ideals, decrying Orlov as the devil in carnate, but finally Orlov shows him how hollow and fractured his blind morality is, in that he and Valentino serve the same masters, puppets in a meaningless child's game of international politics where morality a magic trick for children and the unsuspecting indigeony.

The movie leaves us this way, facing a government (for those from the countries mentioned in the end) which is based on the same blasted lie as Orlov's existence (or even worse, that of one of his rivals in the trade, who claims to be above simply 'selling guns' because he has political motives).

We are left wondering where we fit in. Who are the Orlov's, Vitaly's, Valentino's, who are those indirectly profiting while turning a blind eye to the horror. American soldiers, supporters of American wars everywhere...American people. You know it's true. The sudden, inescapable gravity of the movie is...You know it's true.

And the world becomes so small...and so meaningless. Because Orlov's arguments are airtight, not because they're true, but because they work. He's just a cog, in a system that will go on with or without him, his only redeeming characteristic is that he has the ability to see through the lies and face reality.

This is the world we live in, what are you going to do about it. Orlov's answer, get rich. Yours?

-sorry about the length, I tend to ramble but I needed to get that out.

-lack of a better word since 'grave' here means 'as serious as death'.

-"a young boy who can only watch its approach with a kind of maligned misunderstanding in his eyes."...and when I ramble, I spout crappy prose like this. I meant to say: a boy who watched his oncoming fate with misunderstanding, feeling (and looking) maligned, but couldn't find a better way to shape it, but then this note sort of negates that anyway doesn't it? rambling again...

-sorry about the misuse of hyphens...I hate hyphens and admittedly don't understand them very well. On that note, 'devil in carnate' doesn't register as a word, I'm going with the Latin, you know...in absentis, in medias res...

-and on THAT note, 'indigeony' is not actually a word but people (other than just me) still use it, I'm taking some license here.

-for those who care, please don't take America as an example out of context, I was born and raised in the U.S.

-structurally, I detested the use of Africa and 'the third world' (with which it was made synonymous in this movie) as the 'be all, end all acme of poverty, ignorance and helplessness. This movie was a stunning and refreshing departure from the usual hollywood fare but then I guess some things never change...

OH! the crouching huddled (one-armed) masses...and the blasted great white father..."ask the white man, he will know"...my eye...

When are we going to learn there is more to the world than scrap-metal city and Zolom...

but then none of this belongs in discussion on the movies core themes, so I cheated by burying it at the bottom of the notes, ah ah ahhh. Right. Bedtime.

-lastly, I was severely disappointed by the lack of discussion I found on this movie, if anyone is actually reading down here then you have to have SOME interest in it...that or my inanity (NOTE CLEARLY the absence of an 's'), I'd be glad to hear from you. [email protected]