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Printer-Friendly ModeLord Cage has noble blood
September 19, 2005 —
Lord of War is a movie unlike any other about the lowly man becoming rich after becoming involved with violent crime. Rather than being directly involved with killing, the protagonist is a gunrunner. He sells arms and other death-dealing devices to those who will use them. He is the man you don't see in Scarface and Black Hawk Down.
The man in question is Yuri Orlov, portrayed wonderfully by Nicolas Cage. After watching one of his performances, I often am unable to imagine anyone else playing the role, and Lord of War is a fine example of that. His character is the vehicle for the entire movie, and he drives it like a professional driver on a closed course.
Yuri was born in Ukraine, but his family moved to New York when he was a child. They pretended to be Jewish so as to avoid unwanted attention from the Soviet Union. His parents run a restaurant, with the help of himself and his younger brother, Vitaly, played by Jared Leto.
Leto's performance is also admirable. Early on, Vitaly becomes addicted to cocaine, and I began to fear that his role would simply become a dumbed-down version of his excellent leading performance in Requiem for a Dream. Fortunately, later on in the movie, his role expands greatly and helps several important scenes succeed.
Yuri lives a relatively quiet but unsatisfied life, until he comes to a realization one day after seeing a man kill two people who attempt to assassinate him in a restaurant. Yuri decides to begin selling weapons. Internally, he uses the image in his head of the man defending himself to justify his decision. His visible internal struggle is what drives the real drama of the story. As the story progresses and he finds more and more financial success, we realize that he has simply went from living a quiet but unsatisfied life to a loud, unsatisfied life. When he first makes his decision, in his first-person narrative directed at the audience, Yuri tells himself that killing is human nature.
Early on, Yuri encounters the reigning champion of gunrunning, who has a different way of justifying what he does. He takes sides, and traffics weapons only to the side he wants to win. Yuri eventually surpasses him in influence, because as he tells us, the less honest you are, the further you get. He tells us something to the effect of, "It's best to start with dishonesty in any relationship. That's the way it ends up anyway."
So, Yuri's life is a lie to everyone around him. Vitaly is the only person who really knows what he does, and, in the end, is the only one able to actually send him a message about what he is doing to himself and the world around him. What takes Yuri quite some time to realize is that he has been lying to himself as well, and he has nothing in the end.
Lord of War is one of the best movies to come along in recent weeks. It covers a broad spectrum of meanings, could be subject to multiple interpretations, and is based on a true story. Granted, likely loosely based, but it still gives us valuable insight into a world which is often forgotten.