Review of Lord of War (2005) by Filipeneto — 24 Jul 2018

This film, allegedly based (very lightly) on actual events, tells the story of a Russian-American gun dealer and confronts the immorality of the war and arm business. It would even be depressing if it weren't ironic. Irony is the key to perceive the taunts of a film that takes for granted the inevitability of violence: just like food, death is a human need and man will always feel the urge to kill his fellow man. This provocation is the starting point for a trip to the world of arms trafficking, through the eyes of a trafficker who has surely killed more people than a nuclear bomb and who seems to live in a parallel reality. For him, the death of a child-soldier is sad, but its worse if its with arms purchased from the competition. All this shows us that this is a sarcastic movie, but with little drama and no characters that we can enjoy.

As far as actors are concerned, the film is based on a good performance by Nicholas Cage, perhaps one of his best film performances to date. He is not one of the actors that I particularly like, so I was surprised to have liked his work here. The rest of the cast merely seeks to support him with poorly structured and developed characters. Jared Leto was a casting error.