Jason and I went to see Lord of War on Saturday night. It was better than I expected and both of us enjoyed the movie. The movie is a narrative told by Yuri Orlov (Nicholas Cage), a charming, intelligent, and witty gun runner who is a disgusting mess of a person. The film itself seems ambivalent towards Yuri; sometimes, it snuggles up to his humanity only to reveal just how morally repugnant true amorality can be.
From the opening title sequence over a smart short film about the life of a bullet to the sobering footnotes at the movie’s end, Lord of War is a black dramedy. The subject matter is dark and exciting, but laughing is the only way to keep from crying at the absurdity of the small arms trade and its disregard for human pain and suffering.