There’s little use arguing with writer-director Andrew Niccol’s visual bravado in the opening of “Lord of War.”
Arms dealer Yuri Orlov, played by Nicolas Cage, begins his amoral tale of supply and demand standing amid a shimmering ground cover of spent shells. It’s quite the metaphor for the detritus of war.
Niccol then uses digital effects to give us a bullet’s perspective on its trajectory from manufacturer to target. From a factory in what looks like the former Soviet Union to a chaotic street fight in an African town, we’re the bullet. On that street, we’re loaded into a rifle. A kid comes into cross hairs. We whiz through the air.
Meant to convey the human costs of warfare, its use of a child to make a point becomes a cruel and too-casual flourish. It’s a self-inflicted wound “Lord of War” never quite recovers from.
Contrary to the director and his star’s apparent wish to impart lessons about the nasty wrinkle of the arms trade, “Lord of War” represents a battle between veneer and values. Style wills out over the substantive.
Yuri Orlov’s family left the Ukraine as part of an exodus of that former Soviet republic’s Jews. Only his family isn’t Jewish. Yuri’s father posed as Jewish, wound up in New York’s Brighton Beach, and continued the ruse to the point of keeping kosher and observing the Sabbath.
Yuri receives his calling when he witnesses a Russian mob hit and lives to tell. And to sell.
When he begins hawking guns, he invites his younger brother to join him. Jared Leto plays brother Vitaly.
It doesn’t take long to see that Vitaly hasn’t the stomach for the merchandise or its customers. After an arms deal, Vitaly splits.
Later, Yuri finds Vitaly snorting lines of coke and extolling drug-fueled epiphanies.
Yuri’s own philosophizing tends toward the cynical and self-aggrandizing. “Bullets change governments in far shorter time than votes,” he says. Or, “I sold guns to every army but the Salvation Army.”
Business booms for Yuri with the fall of the Soviet Union. It doesn’t hurt to have an uncle high up in the desperate and corrupt Ukrainian army.
Along the way, Yuri meets other champions of gray-market economics. One, Simeon Weisz (Sir Ian Holm), is a smooth international operator whose quiet manner belies his trade. Yuri first meets – and is snubbed by – Weisz at an arms show in Germany.
Like Mick Jagger’s persona in “Sympathy for the Devil,” Yuri is pleased to share some of the hellish scenes he has been privy to: Beirut, the former Soviet Union, Afghanistan. “I never sold arms to Osama bin Laden, back when he was bouncing checks.” It’s a line that sounds cheeky, but smells too.
Much of the film’s drama takes place in Liberia, where blood diamonds help arm boy soldiers who resemble evil clown posses.
Eamonn Walker plays Andre Baptiste, the nation’s corrupt president. The elevated warlord’s broken English gives the film its title.
Niccol tries to bring depth to Yuri with a love story. It’s not the fault of Bridget Moynahan, who plays supermodel Ava Fontaine, that this attempt proves weak. Like Yuri, who fell for Ava when he was a young man, the movie is too happy to capture her beauty.
Niccol (who wrote the screenplay for “The Terminal”) sets off to show us Yuri’s amoral world. Yet like some undercover narc, he becomes so bewitched he winds up mimicking his target’s cravenness.
The seeming love affair between director and lead character leaves Interpol agent Valentine (an underutilized Ethan Hawke) with little to do but look aggrieved at his nemesis’ evasiveness.
Like Yuri, the movie is self- aware in its way. Like Yuri too, it lives off the erotic charge that comes from movie violence.
There should be a phrase for the errors “Lord of War” makes: Call them substance abuse.
We’ve known about the damage inflicted by hollow-point bullets. What kind of wounds do hollow-point movies cause?
Film critic Lisa Kennedy can be reached at 303-820-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com.
** | “Lord of War”
R for strong violence, drug use, language and sexuality|2 hours, 2 minutes|DRAMA|Written and directed by Andrew Niccol; photography by Amir Mokri; starring Nicolas Cage, Jared Leto, Bridget Moynahan, Ian Holm, Eamonn Walker|Opens today at area theaters
