Lord of War (2005)

“Lord of War” (2005) is about Yuri Orlov (Nicholas Cage), a Ukrainian Catholic immigrant who pretends to be Jewish to avoid Russian mob hits after moving to NYC to escape the USSR. Originally working in the family restaurant, he quickly figures out that he can sell guns to mobsters to make a buck. Mobsters turn into to governments, and guns turn into more guns (and also helicopters), all while Jack Valentine (Ethan Hawke, an Interpol agent) is chasing him down and trying to catch him in the act. 
It was like “Catch Me If You Can” (2002) mixed with “The Wolf of Wallstreet” (2013), but with infinitely less Leonardo DiCaprio.

The story is told using real-life events, like the fall of the Berlin Wall, a coup in Burkina Faso, and Liberia just being a straight-up nightmare. Both Yuri and Jack are amalgamations of multiple real-life people in those fields, and the story cherrypicks the most entertaining components from those stories for this story.
If this were based on a singular person, that would be incredibly frustrating. But seeing as it’s multiple people combined into one, for multiple characters, I will happily accept it as a story-telling device.

We watch Yuri’s gun-running empire grow, seeing how he benefits from wars ending (so he can grab up the guns left over) and wars starting (when he gets new customers). For about 2/3 of the movie, he’s in the US or Europe, just making the various deals. It’s not until he goes to Liberia to sell guns directly to Andre Baptiste, President-turned-Dictator, that you start to get an appreciation for how terrible Yuri’s business is for the people at the wrong end of the barrel.

A standout thing about this movie was that almost the entire story was told via Yuri’s narration, instead of dialogue. There were plenty of scenes where two characters spoke, but much of it was as if Yuri were reading his autobiography. It was all in Cage’s voice, so your enjoyment will depend on how much you can handle that, but I liked the novelty of it.

There was a particularly cool scene where Yuri’s Antonov-12 cargo plane landed on a dirt “highway” somewhere in Africa. Yuri was detained and the plane was left on the road, and we’re treated to a fascinating, sped-up scene of a bunch of locals stripping the plane down to the struts for parts. 
There’s a video on YouTube of a gecko being devoured by a swarm of ants, leaving nothing but bones. The plane bit was like that.

The movie opened with a snazzy ‘cradle to grave’ sequence of a bullet getting stamped, packaged, delivered, and used, shown from the perspective of the bullet. Unfortunately for us, it’s terrible CGI. I don’t know if that’s a result of the times or the studio just didn’t want to put enough money into it to make it look better.

The soundtrack wasn’t stellar, but there were some gorgeous orchestral tracks sprinkled throughout.

Chunks of the script (both dialogue and monologue) contained dry or dark humor, which I appreciated. That didn’t make it a comedy though, just brevity in a dramatic setting.

This movie was outstanding, until the end.
Throughout the entire film, the only focus of grey- and black-market gun selling is from Yuri and his competitors. Then, at the very end, a line of text appeared, noting that the U.S., U.K., Russia, China, and France are the five biggest sellers of military-grade weaponry in the world, and are also the five seats of the U.N. Security council. The text wasn’t related to the story, or alluded to throughout Yuri’s adventures. It was just some ham-fisted inject.
Director Andrew Niccol had an outstanding story of a grey-market gun-runner, then ruined it with a stupid, moralistic final title card.
He might as well have just written “guns are bad” in bloody red text.

I would actually recommend this movie, as long as you turn it off as soon as Cage stops narrating.