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Created Jul 08, 2007 08:38PM PST • Edited Apr 24, 2021 06:03AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Very Good 3.5

   Letting Cage Be Cage: tight writing, fine casting, clever and well executed cinematic shooting and cutting. Deviously clever topicality.

   This movie is – if nothing else – a meditation on war at its most despicably awful. Lord of War depicts wars that are not “the continuation of politics by other means” (in von Clauswitz’s famous construction). It depicts wars that are the vehicles through which adolescently stunted men obtain money and power. In short, this movie’s pacifistically iconic wars are not just hell, they are self-indulgent hell.

4. Acting

   Good 3.0

   Lord of War is a Nic Cage vehicle, not an encouraging omen. Sure, he makes the occasional good movie and Lord of War is that. As a package deal, the movie and its sublime title share a Zen-like and rather pleasant amorality with the star of the show. The star remains Nic Cage however, an actor whose screen presence is odd and often annoying. His stock-in-trade is to always appear one step away from completely losing his composure, making him the rare leading man who is more off-putting than magnetic. Plus his line readings are so flat they make Keanu Reeves sound like Olivier. But his profound weirdness seems almost natural in LoW because the heinous acts conducted by his arms dealer character would push any normal person to the verge of breakdown. So this is a case where it works to just let Cage be Cage.

   In the end – like many a celluloid criminal kingpin before him – his antihero character brings his castle down around him. Of course by this time – well into the third reel – he is so detached from reality that he doesn’t allow himself to be brought down by his moral descent, nor by losing his criminal kingdom, his wife, his heir, his brother, and his parents. He is afflicted by the state that best encapsulates the iconic Nic Cage film character: abject dissipation.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars OK 2.5

7. Female Costars Barely OK 2.0

8. Male Costars OK 2.5

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    The whole damn movie is emotionally cold and cutting, like a Stones song come to life (minus the great rhythm section and guitar lines, of course).

    But you have to give Lord of War its due: written and directed by Andrew Niccol, it is a brilliant production. Not British brilliant, as in merely a “good show.” American brilliant, as in "genius touches abound.æ Niccol also wrote The Truman Show so the guy knows brilliant.

    For instance the opening credits are just gaudy good (like the E-Street Band at full tilt). Here – for the first time ever – we see a bullet’s eye view of its own lifecycle, a death delivering supply-chain come to life, ending – as these things go – in a most horrific killing.

    After all, the projectile being cinematically projected is a bullet, meant for killing. Bullet rash also afflicts star Cage on the lobby poster, a harbinger of the mayhem to come. Consider yourself warned. The movie is not for the squeamish.

    Lord of War’s nausea induction effect is on a par with that of The Aristocrats, another movie that came out at the same time. That said, Penn Jillette’s little piece of s**t never fires a shot in anger, trafficking – as it does – in a different kind of nihilism.

    Lord of War purports to expose nihilism rather than embrace it, since the action being depicted is “based on real events” (Hollywood language for “one or two events really happened and the rest are the result of feverish speculation”) that are crying out for wider exposure. Plus, the movie clearly breaks new filmic ground, delivering a satisfying kick without the self-referential savagery that passes for action in most other Guns & Ammo flicks.

11. Direction Great 4.0

12. Play Very Good 3.5

13. Music Very Good 3.5

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5
15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 3.1

17. Sex Titillating 2.0

18. Violence Savage 4.0

19. Rudeness Profane 3.5

21. Reality

    Glib 1.6

22. Circumstantial Glib 2.0

23. Biological Glib 2.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0