Philippine Christian University

Reaction Paper

Jan Micka J. Quevedo - MBA

Movie Title: Lord of War

Main Cast:
Nicholas Cage – Yuri Orlov, an international arms dealer who sells guns to anyone who can pay
Ethan Hawke – Jack Valentine, an incorruptible Interpol agent and the primary threat to Yuri’s
livelihood
Jared Leto – Vitaly Orlov, Yuri’s brother and business partner
Bridget Moynahan – Ava Fontaine, world-renown supermodel and Yuri’s wife
Eamonn Walker – Andre Baptiste Sr., violent dictator in control of Liberia

Written and directed by Andrew Niccol, Lord of War is a 2005 crime drama film, starring Nicolas
Cage, Jared Leto, Bridget Moynahan, and Ethan Hawke. Lord of War depicts the story of Yuri Orlov
as he enters the illegal arms trade shortly before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, eventually
becoming a well-known and unscrupulous gun runner. The film was released in the United States
by Lions Gate Films on September 16, 2005, and was released internationally by Arclight Films. The
film grossed US$72.6 million at the box office.

Summary:

Nicholas Cage plays Yuri Orlov, the eldest son of Ukrainian refugees from the Soviet Union,
where he and his brother, Vitaly, help their parents out in their Ukrainian restaurant as cooks and
helpers. While Vitaly is somewhat satisfied with this simple life of cooking borscht and washing
dishes, Yuri wants to achieve the ‘American Dream’ and get out of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, where
he grew up after leaving Ukraine. He struggles to grasp at any real business opportunity in order to get
out of the shadow of his ordinary life in Brooklyn.
However, one day when he is dining at a restaurant in Brighton Beach, the business idea he
needs comes to life for Yuri in the form of a Russian mobster killing two would-be assassins and
fending off their attack with AK-47 Kalashnikov rifles. Yuri believes that there is a lot of money to
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made in international arms sales and decides to go into business despite the protests of his brother,
Vitaly, and the fact that his parents don’t know what he’s up to.

The two brothers get their first break during the 1982 Lebanon War, where they sell weapons
to both Israeli and Lebanese troops despite seeing the weapons be used to commit atrocities. As Yuri
prospers, he eventually catches the attention of Interpol agent Jack Valentine. Valentine represents a
unique threat to Yuri because he is after recognition, not money, and cannot be bribed. Vitaly becomes
addicted to cocaine after a Colombian drug lord forces the brothers to accept several kilos of cocaine
as payment. Yuri checks Vitaly into a drug rehabilitation clinic and continues alone. He uses his profits
to seduce and marry his favorite model, Ava Fontaine.

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Yuri flies to Ukraine and illegally buys Soviet
military hardware through his uncle, a former Soviet general who is overseeing the distribution of
weapons to the newly formed Ukrainian Army. His uncle dies in a car bombing by Yuri's rival, arms
dealer Simeon Weisz. Yuri expands his business to Africa, where he supplies Andre Baptiste Sr., a
bloody Liberian dictator.

Valentine tells Ava that her husband is an arms dealer, prompting her to confront him. In
response, Yuri starts trading timber and oil, but becomes frustrated with the lower profits of honest
work. When Baptiste visits him in person and offers him the largest payday of his career, a stash of
valuable blood diamonds, Yuri returns to crime. Ava follows him one day, unaware that Interpol is
following her, and she discovers the shipping container that holds his arms-dealing office.
Yuri picks up Vitaly to assist him with a deal in Sierra Leone, where a militia force allied with
Baptiste is preparing to destroy a refugee camp. Vitaly pleads with Yuri to abandon the deal after
witnessing Baptiste's men kill a woman and child with machetes, but Yuri refuses, knowing that
Baptiste's men would kill them. In response, Vitaly steals a pair of grenades and destroys a truck full
of weapons, also killing Baptiste's son, before he is gunned down. Yuri is spared and receives half his
payment for the remaining truckload. He pays a doctor to forge Vitaly's death certificate and remove
the bullets from his body, but a missed bullet is found by customs officials, and Yuri is arrested. Ava
divorces Yuri, and his parents disown him. Valentine detained Yuri in anticipation of his trial and
conviction, but Yuri is confident that he will be free soon because his business served the interests of
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the U.S. government. He elects to continue with his business and lifestyle; a business he describes as
a necessary evil.
The film has several purposes; the first is to show the tragic market-route that weapons
manufactured in the developed countries take; eventually ending up killing young child soldiers in
civil wars and rebellion conflicts the children have no clue about. In the beginning of the film, the trail
of a bullet manufactured in USSR and ends up killing a child soldier coerced into participating in a
war/civil conflict in Africa, depicts the global connection of the trade.
The second purpose of the film is to portray the connection between illegal arms trade and
other illegal and exploitative dealings like trade in war diamonds, or ‘blood diamonds’. In the film,
Andre Baptist Sr, Liberia’s dictator, buys weapons from Yuri only to supply them to rebels in
neighboring Sierra Leone in exchange of diamonds mined by unwilling, forced and enslaved miners.
Trade in illegal arms funds conflicts for the illegal trade in diamonds to proceed without regulations
in a vicious cycle.
The film’s ultimate purpose is to urge action from world powers the US, the U.K, France, Russia and
China, and to create awareness in the governments of these countries in appreciating the unwitting role
they play as the world’s largest exporters of arms, in fueling the illegal arms trade, and the attendant
conflicts shown in the film. A postscript at the end of the movie expressly communicates this message,
and effectively summarizes the film’s purposes.
Personally, the film was a revelation and I felt enlightened and yet angered when I realized the
role that western arms manufacturing companies plays in contributing to deaths in Africa, South
America, and other conflict-torn regions. The poignant moments in the film for me were the death of
the child solder by a bullet manufactured in Russia, and the killing by a machete of the mother and her
child by a Liberian solder.
These two scenes conveyed the ultimate wickedness and inhumane nature of the conflicts
thriving on the illegal sale of arms. I feel that the director succeeded in his aim of stirring righteous
anger in the audience, and I feel that more effort should be exerted in curbing illegal arms trading.
In conclusion, “Lord of War” is obviously much more than an action-thriller film for thrill-
seeking box office audiences – it makes a powerful statement that illegal arms trade should end.