“”Lord of War”” is one of those films that is hard to pin down, on the one hand its’ dark comedy takes away the sting and seriousness of the subject matter, but you keep thinking to yourself that maybe this films should be 100% serious. The tone of the film remains pretty constant and never changes, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Nicolas Cage and Ethan Hawke sizzle on screen together. You can feel the tension in the room.
It’s amazing how much detail director Andrew Niccol put into the actual mechanics of Gun Running. By the time you finish watching “”Lord Of War”” you almost can’t help but think “”Hey! I can be an arm’s dealer now.”” The major flaw in the film is the incessant voiceovers. Everyone who regularly reads my reviews knows how much I despise narration, but somehow in L.O.W. it didn’t bother me as much.In LOW, Nicolas Cage is Russian immigrant Yuri Orlov, he’s tired of being poor and finds his calling in selling arms. He brings his brother Vitaly (Jared Leto) along with him as backup on his first deal. Once the deal was done, he was hooked. Unfortunately his brother eventually saw the end results of what they did for a living and faced a crisis of conscience. To drown his pain Vitaly eventually turns into a drug addict to battle his demons. As Yuri says at one point, it could have easily been him that got the addiction. The irony in this statement is that, drugs wasn’t his addiction, it was the action and thrill of selling guns.