Larger text
Smaller text
Print
E-mailCage rockets through 'Lord of War'
Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage) and Vitali Orlov (Jared Leto)
Lions Gate Films
Director: Andrew Niccol
Stars: Nicolas Cage, Jared Leto, Bridget Moynahan
MPAA rating: R for strong violence, drug use, language and sexuality
The darkly comic, pointedly cynical film can be as abruptly ferocious as "Reservoir Dogs." It's like someone dangerous who kids you along and then turns on a dime to bark, "You think that's funny?"
It even begins that way with a jaunty documentary-like approach to the manufacturing and movement of a bullet, which at the end of the opening credits penetrates the forehead of an African boy.
The ambiguous title "Lord of War" turns out to be a suitable one.
It's narrated with in-your-ear intimacy by Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage) in much the same way Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) led us through "GoodFellas."
Yuri and younger brother Vitali Orlov (Jared Leto) live with their Ukrainian emigre parents in Little Odessa, the primarily Russian-Jewish section of Brooklyn's Brighton Beach near Coney Island.
They're not Jewish, but the father, who runs an Eastern European-American restaurant, gets so caught up in his neighborhood role-playing, he tries to be Jewish.
After witnessing a hit, Yuri perceives a market for weapons. With savvy to spare, he graduates quickly from small-potatoes street dealer to international arms profiteering in the most indiscriminate sense. "An equal opportunity merchant of death," he calls himself.
Yuri is a natural finagler. He enlists Vitali as his assistant ("brothers in arms"). Beats cooking sauces in pop's kitchen, right?
Yuri is brushed off with a sneer when first he meets kingpin arms trafficker Simeon Weisz (Ian Holm).
They meet again when negotiating with Liberian dictator Baptiste Senior (Eamonn Walker) and twitchy-triggered Baptiste Junior (Sammi Rotibi).
Zealous Interpol agent Valentine (Ethan Hawke) doggedly works to nail the Teflon Yuri, who in turn is much more distracted by Ava Fontaine (Bridget Moynahan), the unattainable neighborhood beauty of his youth.
The compulsively watchable "Lord of War" may be tonally uneven. It's so eager for us to rocket along with Yuri and to experience danger from his perspective that it forces us to create our own distance from the magnetic maggot.
What's the advice of Don Vito Corleone in "The Godfather"? "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer." Yuri does.
Cage keeps us closest of all, like a confidant telling us how he pulled off his whole life, confident of his trump card. The pyrotechnics of "Leaving Las Vegas" rewarded him with an Oscar; he's all cunning enterprise chatting us through "Lord of War."
The fast-moving, exceedingly well-crafted film was written and directed with considerable cinematic know-how by Andrew Niccol, a 41-year-old native New Zealander who wrote "The Truman Show" and wrote and directed the underestimated "Simone."
"Lord of War" should thrust him into the foreground.
