Lord of War

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Lord of War
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Andrew Niccol
Produced by	Andrew Niccol Chris Roberts Nicolas Cage Philippe Rousselet Andy Grosch Norm Golightly
Written by	Andrew Niccol
Starring	Nicolas Cage Jared Leto Bridget Moynahan Ian Holm and Ethan Hawke
Music by	Antonio Pinto
Cinematography	Amir Mokri
Editing by	Zach Staenberg
Distributed by	Lions Gate Entertainment
Release date(s)	2005
Running time	123 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	US$50 million[1]
Gross revenue	US$72,617,068 (worldwide)

Lord of War is a 2005 political crime thriller film written and directed by Andrew Niccol which stars Nicolas Cage. It was released in the United States on September 16, 2005, with the DVD following on January 17, 2006 and the Blu-ray Disc on July 27, 2006. Cage plays an illegal arms dealer with similarities to post-Soviet arms dealers Viktor Bout^[2][3][4] and Leonid Minin. The film was officially endorsed by the human rights group Amnesty International for highlighting the trafficking of weapons by the international arms industry.^[5][6] A scene in the movie featured 100 tanks, which were provided by a Czech source. The tanks were only available until December of the year of filming. They were to be returned so they could be sold to Liberia.^[7]

[edit] Plot

The film begins with Yuri Orlov, an American gunrunner of Ukrainian Jewish origin, (Nicolas Cage) standing in a sea of spent shell casings. The opening credits are shown from the perspective of one round of ammunition, being munitioned in a factory in Russia, then packaged, shipped to Africa, where it is loaded and ultimately impacts an African child soldier. The rest of the movie is told in flashback, starting in 1982 and ending in the completion of the opening scene.

Through voice-over, Orlov describes the beginnings of his career. After he sees a Russian mobster kill two would-be assassins in a restaurant, and sees the restaurant's purpose was to fulfill a necessity for food, he decides to fulfill a necessity by providing firearms. He partners up with his brother Vitaly Orlov (Jared Leto). Yuri's first break comes during the 1982 Lebanon War, when he sells guns to all sides of the conflict.

As his business grows, Yuri (through voiceover) tells of his first incident with Jack Valentine (Ethan Hawke), an Interpol agent who cannot be bought with money. Yuri avoids arrest when he changes his boat's name from the Kristol to the Kono and confuses Valentine.

During a business deal with a Colombian drug lord, Yuri is paid with six kilograms of cocaine instead of cash. The contact is unable to pay him anything else and Yuri is forced to accept it, but the drug lord tells Yuri of an upcoming drug raid which will drastically increase the value of that cocaine, netting Yuri a profit multiple times what he would have made with a cash payment. Vitaly and he both keep one kilogram to get high, but Vitaly becomes addicted, and Yuri checks him into a rehabilitation center. From that point onward, he conducts his arms business alone. Soon after this incident, he courts and marries model Ava Fontaine (Bridget Moynahan) and they have a child named Nikolai.

Yuri gets his second break after the Soviet Union dissolves. Yuri rushes to Ukraine after watching Mikhail Gorbachev's Christmas Day 1991 speech of resignation on television. He begins buying tanks and other weapons to expand his operations.

One day, Valentine reveals to Ava that Yuri is an arms dealer. Ava convinces him to stop dealing and he complies for a short while, but it is very hard for him to make the same kind of money as he did as an arms dealer. He is lured back in when his old friend, the dictator of Liberia, Andre Baptiste, approaches him and offers him more money. Yuri brings Vitaly along due to nervousness. During the transaction, Vitaly sees a group of villagers kill a woman and her child with machetes and tries to convince Yuri to stop the transaction. When Yuri refuses, Vitaly takes a grenade and blows up half the gun shipment. A few nearby soldiers immediately kill Vitaly.

Back at home, Valentine follows Ava as she finds Yuri's security container. She and Yuri's parents disown him, and Valentine arrests him. However, Yuri tells Valentine that his superiors at Interpol will not allow him to be arrested, as he has positioned himself as a "necessary evil", who is able to distribute weapons when first-world governments do not want to become directly involved. This proves to be true, and Yuri is released to return to his business. A brief postscript notes that while private arms dealers do a lot of business; the five largest arms exporters – the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, and China – are also the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

[edit] Degree of realism

Plot's details on illegal arms market, particularly on purchases for Tropical Africa in early 1990s, are closely based on real stories and people originating from former Soviet Union. Also, the main protagonist's name, Yuri Orlov, corresponds to the last name of Oleg Orlov, a Russian businessman arrested in Ukraine on suspicion of smuggling prohibited missiles to Iran. Real Orlov was strangled in Kiev's prison in 2007 during the investigation^[8].

However, the scenes of direct shipping armaments from Ukraine's army storages^[9], as well as portrayal of the Interpol as an acting security agency, are entirely fictional.

[edit] Cast

• Nicolas Cage – Yuri Orlov
• Bridget Moynahan – Ava Fontaine Orlov
• Jared Leto – Vitaly Orlov
• Ethan Hawke – Jack Valentine
• Eamonn Walker – André Baptiste Sr.
• Ian Holm – Simeon Weisz
• Donald Sutherland – Colonel Oliver Southern (cameo, face not seen)
• Sammi Rotibi – André Baptiste Jr.
• Yevgeni Lazarev – Gen. Dmitri Orlov

[edit] Music

Opening sequence is filmed on the song "For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield.

[edit] DVD release

The UK DVD release of Lord of War includes, prior to the film, an advert for Amnesty International, showing the AK-47 being sold on a shopping channel of the style popular on cable networks. The American DVD release includes a bonus feature that shows the various weapons used in the movie, allowing viewers to click on each weapon to get statistics about their physical dimensions and histories. The DVD bonus section also contains a public service announcement from Nicolas Cage, addressing the issue of illicit arms sales.

[edit] Reception

[edit] Critical

The film received a 61% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and it also received a special mention for excellence in film making from the National Board of Review.

[edit] Box office

The film grossed $9,390,144 on its opening weekend (2,814 theaters, $3,336 average). After the film's 7-weeks release it grossed a total of $24,149,632 on the domestic market in the US, and $48,467,436 overseas.^[1]

[edit] See also

• Arms industry
• Blood diamond

War zones featured

• Sierra Leone Civil War
• Lebanese Civil War
• Somali Civil War
• Soviet War in Afghanistan
• Second Liberian Civil War

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Lord of War

• Official site
• Lord of War at the Internet Movie Database
• Lord of War at Allmovie
• Lord of War at Rotten Tomatoes
• Lord of War at Box Office Mojo
• Guns featured in the film