Lord of War

Its estimated that 80-90% of all illegal small arms start in the State-sanctioned trade. Saddam Hussain was singled out as a troublesome dictator yet he was sold large volumes of weapons decades before by Western states that decades later launched pre-emptive strikes against him.

The amoral hero at the heart of Andrew Niccol’s thought-provoking thriller is an arms dealer Yuri Orlov (Cage) who will sell weapons to anyone prepared to buy them. As a young man, he sees an attractive girl Ava Fontaine (Moynahan) who he quite rightly feels is way out of his league. He will attract her attention though if he is a man of means. To become a man of means, he identifies the need to sell a commodity with a big profit margin, wanted on a global scale. What falls most into that category ? Arms of course.

Niccol's film is fictional but you sense that this is a salutary lesson where the truth isn’t that far away. Led by academy Award-winner Nicolas Cage, an all-star cast including Ethan Hawke and Jared Leto do their best. This is a slick action thriller, not altogether credible (a one-man big arms dealer would surely get bumped off by those also wanting a piece of action) and wanting to have a moral angle too, since at some point, Yuri must also find he has a conscience. Passable. Thought-provoking at least.

Matt Arnoldi