Lord of War

Andrew Niccol’s film has Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage) narrate his rise from a first Uzi sale to post-Soviet Ukrainian stockpiles and a Liberian dictator’s table. The opening follows one bullet from the factory to an African boy’s head, setting the voiceover’s jokes against that image. Niccol told The Irish Times there is “no phoney epiphany” for Yuri. The man Interpol agent Jack Valentine (Ethan Hawke) catches walks free, and the closing caption names the world’s biggest arms suppliers as the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, shifting blame from one dealer to governments. Niccol also tells the production stories himself: 3,000 real Kalashnikovs bought in the Czech Republic cost less than replicas and were sold back at a loss. The 50 ex-Soviet tanks on the runway belonged to a private arms dealer in the Czech Republic who needed them back by December to sell to Libya; NATO was warned because satellite photos suggested a weapons build-up. Hollywood studios stayed away, so foreign money paid; Amnesty International USA backed the film. A good fit if you can take Yuri’s jokes beside a Sierra Leonean militia’s attack on refugees, and his escape from legal punishment, as deliberate. Not for anyone who can’t watch the bullet’s path or the child soldiers, or who wants the law to win.