Director Niccol does manage to provide a sleek, stylish, and utterly surreal glimpse at this seedy world of crime with some excellent directing that's never really afraid to take chances in terms of camping the film. It's often stark and gritty with some excellent cinematography and beautiful landscapes of foreign countries and deserts. In one funny scene, Yuri explains how leaving a plane in the middle of Africa is like leaving a car in the middle of a ghetto neighborhood, to which we witness villagers stripping a cargo plane in a rapid sequence. In the creative opening we also follow the journey of bullets from creators, distributors and customers.

Sadly, I was disappointed by "Lord of War"; I was hoping and praying for a great film about an arms dealer who doesn't really give a crap about the people using the guns, and I received just that, except in such a boring, and bland package. "Lord of War" when examined sure can tend to be controversial, but the problem with that fact is that  there's not much to be controversial about in the wider spectrum. A film about a gun runner who distributes arms to warlords without flaw in conscience could have been a very ripe and satirical look at government and capitalism, but it takes place mostly in the past and really only tackles the gulf war and cold war. It's edgy, without being groundbreaking, that's for damn sure. It's just a routine film with a slick style about it.

Nicolas Cage is yet again the smug cocky Bruckheimer arch type who always is one step ahead of everyone, Ethan Hawke is yet again the shade of white loyal, law abiding officer seeking to take down the criminal, and Jared Leto is yet again the druggie freak who fucks up. Take these usual character arch types and implant them smack dab in the middle of this film and it's just another thriller. And something about this felt just like a "Scarface" rehash. A man from a foreign country with aspirations discovers crime to be the best road to those aspirations, builds an empire, becomes his own worst enemy and does or doesn't have a conflict of morals. Meanwhile, the whole "I'm content in being evil" shtick on Yuri wears thin pretty damn quickly. The writers can never seem to attribute his sense of arrogance to apathy, tunnel vision, or plain ignorance.

And Yuri delivers such self-serving narration that I've seen done millions of times in much better films. His narration is never catchy, clever, or engrossing, it's just so ho-hum. It presents itself in an "Aren't we smart?" fashion, when really it's not. And the statement it gives us "America loves capitalism" (Now that I think of it...) "the biggest countries, including ours, are crooked," (Really?) "exchange arms for war," (You don't say?) "and war is infinite because of it." (Um... der?) is almost laid out in the climax like it's a startling revelation. Have the writers kept up with current events in, say, the last thirty years? Even people who don't keep up with the world's events are perfectly aware of this revelation. Well you know what, water is wet, Hispanics really do eat rice and beans, and I'm not Superman. What's that you say? Duh? Well, imagine my response at the climax. "Lord of War" is smug and never as good as it could be, and never the quality it tries to be.

I really wanted to like this, but sadly, as is the case half of the time, I was disappointed. "Lord of War" is anything and everything but edgy and controversial. It's, from beginning to end, a routine political thriller with a "no shit" message that it tries to pass of as a revelation. Despite slick direction and cinematography, it falls short of originality, true
performances, and any sort of edge that it aspires to accomplish.

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