Lord of War

After a brief introduction on gun statistics by Nicholas Cage, we have the coolest opening scene for a movie since Catch Me If You Can a few years ago. We are introduced to the bullet-cam, as we follow the entire life of a bullet since the moment it is created, cased, shipped and sold to an African country where seconds later it'll be shot blowing a kid's head in its way. This is Lord of War, Andrew Niccol's follow up to the underappreciated masterpiece that is Gattaca and the piece of shit that is S1m0ne. But hey, everybody makes mistakes, and Niccol redeems himself here.

This is the story of Yuri Orlov (Cage), an Ukranian born New Yorker who found his call in the business that is arms dealing after realizing that guns is something the world will never stop buying. He enlists his brother Vitaly (Jared Leto), and together travel the world selling arms to whoever wants them. They don't care what are those people to do with them, not even if it's to kill someone right next to them, or to fight America. It's not their problem, someone has to supply them guns and ammo, and if they don't do it someone else will. So make so much money they can't have enough of it, drinking vodka and snorting coke like crazy in the process, which gets Vitaly in a rehab center a couple times, but no big deal.
They have enemies though, Ian Holm plays Simeon Weisz, Yuri's rival in the business, and Ethan Hawke plays Jack Valentine, the Interpol agent trying to catch them. But they are no trouble for Yuri either, and he even finds time to deduce the girl of his dreams (Bridget Moynahan), marry her and have a child, keeping his business as good as ever while all that happens, without them knowing a thing. Well, she knows, but they don't talk about it.

Nicholas Cage carries the movie from start to finish, he's in almost every scene minus a couple, and he does an outstanding job at being neutral about the whole deal, and that shows perfectly in his character. The soundtrack is also a high point, and of course that it includes Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah which everybody is using these days. It's a great song and I love it, but I've heard it in like 5 movies these past couple of weeks.

Something eventually happens between all of the characters, but it's not that important. And that what really surprised me about the movie, that being all about guns, it's very uneventful. I mean, stuff happens, but just like Yuri, we don't care much because it doesn't concern us. Until it does, and that's when the movie could've gone for the happy ending or the violent and cool ending, but It doesn't go for any of them. What Lord of War goes for is the for idea it's been telling us all the time, that guns will never go away, and that someone will always sell them. It's a perfect ending for a great and very entertaining movie.