Year: 2005Genre: Crime / Thriller / Social Drama
Director/Screenwriter: Andrew Niccol
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Jared Leto
Released just a year after Greg Campbell's book Blood Diamonds made the public aware of the atrocities over guns and diamonds happening in Sierra Leone and other countries in West Africa, Lord of War was a smartly crafted explanation of how Americans were (and possibly still are) partly responsible for the violence there. Following the life of a Ukranian immigrant who becomes one of the leading arms dealers for war-torn countries, the film acts as a crime thriller, but really uncovers a lot of the terrible (and completely legal!) practices going on around the world to help keep guns in the arms of everyone that wants one.
With such obvious references to corrupt governments and how easy it is for people to obtain guns, it's clear that the filmmakers believe that the countries themselves are to blame for the violence that stems from these arms deals. If they didn't make it so simple for people like Nicolas Cage's character Yuri Orlov to sell, and similarly, if countries didn't have such a propensity to go to war with each other over things like diamonds and power, we wouldn't have so many deaths in already poverty-stricken countries everyday. I definitely agree with this assessment, but I also think that Niccol and co. spend too much time on the wealthy and positive lifestyle of their main character that we aren't able to feel the negative aspects of these arms deals. Until the end of the film, I almost feel like I like Orlov, which is interesting, but I think it would be more so if we could also see how terrible a person he is.
1) What films have you seen where the main character is clearly a bad guy? Were you able to sympathize with them?
2) What other movies have you seen Nicolas Cage in? Is he good at playing this kind of role, making us both laugh and get angry? How or how not?
