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Lord of War
Lord of War is social and political commentary thinly disguised as satire. It kind of beats you about the head repeatedly with the message that the arms trade is bad. With the number of times this message hits you in the face, it’s clearly aimed at people with a 10 second attention span and the retention capabilities of a goldfish.
Nicholas Cage has once again found a character with which to indulge that self-pitying whine that we have grown so fond of. Yuri Orlov, the protagonist has no redeeming qualities. Unlike Nick Naylor in Thank You For Smoking, who manages to be relatable and likeable, Yuri Orlov is just sleaze with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, which doesn’t make the film any more watchable.
As far as plot goes, this one doesn’t have much. Yuri gets into gun running, makes some money, tricks his soon to be wife, does more gun running, lies, cheats, steals, gets his brother killed, and ultimately gets arrested and subsequently freed. But, to be fair, if you’re watching this film once, that’s alright, if you’re watching it more than once you clearly misunderstood the intent of the film and thought it was entertainment. And if that’s the case, there’s not much hope for you.
Dodginess
If it wasn’t for the underlying intent, that of delivering a message, Lord of War would be pretty dodgy. However, as everything is geared towards making sure that by the end of the film you understand that the international arms trade is bad, the film runs more like a documentary and the dodginess factor is made irrelevant. Lord of War gets a 1 on the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man Scale. The dodgiest moment came when the film makers thought that the little factoid at the end of the film about the 5 permament members of the UN security council being the biggest arms dealers would make a difference and bring these nations crashing to their knees because of the wave of support for the film makers cause clearly neglected to realise that in order to have a big impact, you’d have to have a popular film. Oops.
Rewatchability Rating
If you can ignore the message or, the preaching tone of the film doesn’t irritate you, you might be able to stomach watching this more than once. But, as I watch films for entertainment and not social commentary (something I assume the readers of this site do as well) Lord of War ranks a 1 on the rewatchability index.
Most Memorable Quote
The only quote that really stands out, and this is because it was the opening line and the film hadn’t managed to irritate me to the point of not concentrating yet was the following “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 we arm the other 11?“
Final Thoughts
Lord of War, while it does have some amusing moments is one of those films that would be right at home in any collection that also features Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 911, An Inconvenient Truth, and Supersize Me. All of these have one thing in common, a strong message with which you are beaten about the head repeatedly, and very little repeat entertainment value.