"Lord of War" (2005) - Movie Review

How can right and wrong be defined? How can there be a straight forward way of identifying it? Is legal right? What is law? Is Law right? There will be so many questions which will be asked by any one more than what Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage) sells guns to his customer in this movie. He is a businessman. His business is selling arms. It is quite ironical and symbolical whenever Yuri asks favour from his brother Vitaly (Jared Leto), saying “brothers in arms”. Having no country as themselves and world as their playing ground, these two enter their age of youth in to selling guns. The pair is good and effective. One do the talk and other watch their backs. When movie goes like this, the feeling is that whether this is about the rise and fall of a great arms dealer? Of course it has been taken like that. It is expected to be like that. It is an open plot left as it is. The most expected is when his uncle Dmitri is about to start his car. Then what makes this a wickedly entertaining and provocative movie?

In the past few months of my vigorous movie watching, the movies which impresses as the best are the ones which are honest both in script and in character. It is irony that Yuri Orlov is honest, in telling the truth to the audience. The film is the narration of his philosophies and rules in running a gun business. This honesty is the script’s honesty. It is what makes the film a strong and solid effort on unleashing the evils of any individual. Yuri as he says is doing “business”. In fact it is the same concept adopted by “Thank you for smoking” which sounds similar to this but has its own way of making it deep and interesting. It is the argument of any individual. Unless they pull the trigger, the blood is not in their hands. Physical representation plays a vital part in escaping guilt. It is the same what Yuri follows. And when he gets the encounter of it, he goes berserk. Is he evil? Blaming him as evil is no good. Or does blaming the people who operate the machinery going to help in it too? The point is not that alone. The film is the symbol of humanism. The film explores it with blood and hatred. It is in every one of us. The film is about the exploration of how things far ahead in demoniac nature above every one are spinning the wheel of death. So does it mean that to blame the government? But government is the people? But what comes out of this film is something ethereal. Some thing which needs to be condensed as in the minds of human. Loss of soul is intolerable. It can be direct or indirect, but when it comes to the mortuary table, there is the dissection of conscience. A dissection which needs to be done with every one of us.

Addiction is a strange behaviour. Anything which brings in the curiosity of human mind can be addictive. The driving force may be money, sex or hate, but after a point of time it becomes them. Selling guns is the addictive behaviour of Yuri. He knows he has crossed the point where in the driving force is nothing but the addiction itself. He hunts himself during this around the world tour of gun shows. His hunting involves his achievements in carnal pleasures with wealth and sins. Nicolas Cage gives the character a single emotion throughout the film. An emotion of not being emotional. The film never brings in the feeling of him being evil in a direct punching action. It is strange that his actions are sinful enough but there is no emotion against him. He loves his wife and kid. He wants his brother to be good and his parents to be happy. He does not hate any one. He is the great business man who happens to sell the steels of death. But at the very end of the movie, he becomes emotional, for a moment. That moment multiplies itself to be lord of his own war. Cage once again proves that he is capable of anything and everything.

So the question comes in a person that, what can be done? The film is the door to realize the worst of things happening around the world. It is not alone because of Yuri but also because of him. Because, he forms an element in a society of individuals who wants peace. And he supplies the needs to destroy it even though he does not pull the triggers on all the people who got their life taken by his equipments. It is not about how can we stop about all the killing around the world, but is about the individual action of stopping something next to any one. The worst thing the movie could bring in to any one is the complacency. It is that the far worse things are happening in wretched place than an individual does or does not do in his/her near proximity. But the silent agenda is not that. It is pictured using the character of Agent Jack Valentine (Ethan Hawke). He may fail every time against Yuri but there prevails some thing out of reach in his eyes. The eyes free from war and have witnessed hell in Yuri in the final sequence. End of day it comes to individual and their choices. It is the sense of guilt and conscience remotely present in most of the people. It is in Yuri too and it is the story of identifying it and making him human. That is the punishment he gets for rest of his life.