Bullets and Wits Fly High in Lord of War
There is a thesis moment in Lord of War, a moment that defines the film and drives home the point more than any other scene. That moment comes in 1980s Afghanistan, where Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage) is delivering a shipment of guns to the mujahedeen, the “freedom fighters” who were battling the Soviets. Orlov, Ukrainian by birth, is selling weapons that will inevitably kill his own countrymen (a fact he later says lends him credibility), but the real moment comes when Orlov watched a young fighter fire off a test clips from a brand new AK-47. It happens in slow motion, and with each ejection of an empty cartridge we hear the ringing of a cash register.
Lord of War is the right film at the right time, the rare cinematic moment that keenly defines the times in which we live. The portrait of Orlov and his world is not particularly glamorous; it is not painted as the kind of orbit we might like to inhabit. The overall tone is pessimistic, and the film takes a nonchalant attitude towards third world exploitation and genocide. The film does not sugarcoat truths like the fact that the biggest arms traffickers in the world are also the only permanent members of the UN Security Council, and that war is simply good for business. The pessimistic tone is refreshing, an unsympathetic comment that we need right now.
The opening credit sequence sets up the film perfectly, showing the bottom line of the arms trade. We follow a bullet from fabrication to firing. From the point of view of the bullet, we go through the press, down the assembly line, through inspection, into a crate to a third world war zone, where it is loaded into a magazine, into the chamber, fired, and into the head of its young target. The film gets our attention immediately, as we go from a casual journey, to a sudden, jolting, final end.
Children are everywhere in Orlov’s world. He has a son himself, but we see less of him than the orphans of the regions where Orlov makes his deals. From the young soldiers being executed, to the infant that is nearly crushed under the wheel of Orlov’s plane, to the teenage army of Liberia. Children are typically the first victims of any war, the elders either having abandoned them or been killed off, and they quickly become targets for people like Andre Baptiste (Eamonn Walker), the leader of Liberia. As Baptiste says, a bullet fired by a 14-year-old is just as effective as one fired by a 40-year old, sometimes more so. Baptiste, with his American flag lapel pin, is one of the characters that mirrors Orlov, the outward manifestation of what he pretends not to be. His bastardization of phrases defines Orlov and gives the film its title. He uses “bath of blood” for bloodbath and “lord of war” for warlord. Orlov corrects him, but Baptiste simply says, “I like it better my way.” Baptiste not only speaks to Orlov’s character, but also to American policy, pointing out its hypocrisy. In a scene set in 2000, Orlov arrives in Africa, greeted by Baptiste, who hands him a newspaper with a front-page story on our bungled election. “Now America must shut up forever,” he says. Walker, who is probably best known as Kareem Said on HBO’s Oz, gives Baptiste a no-nonsense, matter-of-fact quality. There is an honesty to Batiste that is missing from the other characters in the film.
Orlov has his mirrors, and he also has his unwitting victims. His younger brother Vitaly (Jared Leto) starts out a partner and ends up a victim, unable to cope with the human tragedy for which he is somewhat culpable. Vitaly only does a few deals with his brother, before he becomes hopelessly addicted to cocaine and spends the rest of the film in and out of rehab. Vitaly is one of the most tragic characters in the film. He never quite gets it together, and his devotion to his brother gets him killed.
Orlov’s success is not overnight. Early on he is overshadowed by the likes of Simeon Weisz (Ian Holm), the older, richer, more established gunrunner with connections Orlov cannot come close to. Weisz shuts him out; he is too good for Orlov. When he vents this to his brother, Vitaly asks, “What do you want to do, go more legit?” Orlov answers, “No, more illegal.” He later admits that he deliberately made his deals so convoluted that even he did not know whether or not they were legal.
In Orlov’s world, terms like “legal” and “illegal” do not really apply. The law does work in his favor, but that is of little importance. Orlov’s most important partner is the man we see the least of, the shadowy Army Colonel Oliver Southern (Donald Sutherland, though without checking the credits you would never know it). The Colonel is that godlike figure so prevalent in Niccol’s work, the unseen eye pulling all the strings, not unlike the Al Pacino character in S1m0ne or the Ed Harris character in The Truman Show (which Niccol wrote but did not direct). The Colonel stays in the background, a silent partner, but he shows up at the right times.
The real face of law is Jack Valentine (Ethan Hawke), the agent who chases Orlov all over the world. Valentine is a man of near biblical fury. He cares as much as Orlov does not. In a sense, Valentine is our surrogate in the film, the “hero” (though the idea of a hero in this film is a bit absurd). For all of his passion, Valentine is as naïve about the arms trade as we are. He berates Orlov for selling AK-47s, which Valentine dubs “the real weapons of mass destruction.” And he is probably right, but what he does not see is that there are mechanisms in place to keep them in the hands of “freedom fighters” around the world. “I’d prefer people to fire my guns and miss,” Orlov responds, “as long as they keep firing.” It is another one of Orlov’s lies. He is a master of deceit, justifying his lies to his wife early on by saying that he based the relationship on lies and deceit because “since that’s where they all end up, it seemed like a logical place to start.” Through it all, Orlov lies to no one more than he lies to himself.
It is only when the Berlin Wall comes down and the Soviet Union dissolves that Orlov’s fortunes improve. He turns a corner and is able to cut deals with disgruntled Red Army officers to acquire tanks, helicopter gunships, mortars, and anything else he can carry (as he is doing this, we learn that after the fall of the USSR more than $32 billion dollars worth of arms were stolen from Ukraine alone). The biggest thing Orlov gets his hands on is the Avtomat Kalashnikov, the AK-47, the most widely used, most reliable infantry weapon in the world, and perhaps one of Russia’s biggest exports. When Orlov gets his hands on his first crate, the rifle is filmed lovingly, with the only hint of romanticism we get anywhere in the film. For Orlov, the rifle is a point of national pride, as he says that nothing else the Soviet Union produced was ever of such high quality. He is proud to offer such solid merchandise. The rifle, of course, is also about money, and he is able to acquire them in seemingly unlimited quantity.
Lord of War is subversive. If this were another film, the story might go a little differently. Niccol thankfully keeps the strength of his convictions and never cops out. Valentine, the “hero” of the film, gets very little screen time and loses in the end. He is appropriately named. A valentine is a message of love, and Valentine is the only man in the film who gives a damn. Love and Valentine both lose out in the end. He does eventually catch up to Orlov, catching him red handed. Valentine finds weapons, papers, laptop computers, the whole operation. He swiftly arrests Orlov, and this is the part in the film where we might expect Valentine to deliver a blistering lecture, telling Orlov how heinous his crimes have been. We might expect Orlov to wind up in jail, probably feeling remorse for the way he lived his life. We get the opposite. It is not Valentine but Orlov who gives the lecture, telling him (us) how for all of his dealings, he is really a small player in the arms trade, and he is far too valuable to the right people to ever spend a day in court. Sure enough, the Colonel shows up, handing a briefcase full of cash to Orlov as he exits the building. “Most people would be happy to walk out of jail,” he tells us, “I expect to be paid for it.” Any notions we might have about law and order in the world go quickly out the window.
The final note is brilliantly pessimistic. “Evil prevails when good men fail to act,” quotes Orlov, adding, “they should have said, ‘evil prevails.’” The final scene is one that we have seen repeatedly in the film, Orlov bribing his latest shipment across an African border. Business as usual.
Film Rating: êêêê1/2 (out of 5)
