![]() ![]() All the while he eludes the grasp of Interpol Agent Jack Valentine (very good Ethan Hawke), by keeping three steps ahead. He marries his trophy bride, supermodel Ava Fontaine (stunning Bridget Moynahan), has a son, and living in a luxury apartment in Manhattan. Yuri eventually hits his stride and becomes very successful and very wealthy. He also acts as an independent agent for undisclosed countries supplying arms to "freedom fighters". Yuri truly becomes the Lord of War supplying arms to anyone and any country for a profit. "Lord of War" traces the Orlov brothers over the course of 20 years—through the end of the Cold War to the advent of terrorist threats and dictatorships in third world countries. He enlists his brother Vitaly (Leto) into the business. He finds that he also has an innate gift for his chosen profession. Being an arms dealer is the path to success. ![]() As a young man he has an epiphany witnessing a Russian mafia hit. ![]() ![]() Yuri Orlov (Cage) is from a Ukrainian family in Little Odessa, NY. He certainly makes us think from the inside out. In a poignant and chilling realization for Yuri (Cage) he says, "They say that 'evil prevails when good men fail to act.' It should be 'evil prevails'." I don't think this is cynicism on Niccol's part, rather only stating what is so given all of history and now. So the question is "How do we arm the other eleven?" Niccol's "Lord of War" is not so much a clever indictment of humanity, rather an acknowledgment of perhaps humanity's darker nature. Yuri comments that there is one firearm for every 12 people in the world. Niccol sets the warped and dark tone in the opening sequence of the manufacture of a bullet to its final destination—so to speak. That lost soul is Yuri Orlov played masterfully by Nicolas Cage. Atop a hillside in Liberia overlooking an impending village massacre once the arms deal settles, Nicolas Cage's Yuri pleads to his conscience rattled brother Vitaly (Jared Leto), "It is none of our business!" Writer and Director Andrew Niccol's "Lord of War" is all about the big business of war, and the cost of selling one's soul. ![]()
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