Lord of Bore

After a spectorqular appearance in 2004’s idiotic but fun to watch “National Treasure”, Nicolas Cage went back to his regular snoozefest material. Cage plays Yuri Orlov, a Russian kid who grew up in Brooklyn and becomes the largest arms smuggler in the world. Lord of War chronicles the rise and fall of Mr. Orlov in the global gunrunning business.

While a movie about smuggling military hardware seems like a great vehicle for some spectorqular action, this one fails in all respects. It never seemed to get moving, and I felt like I was watching it in slow motion. There was no compelling action, no sense of urgency, and nothing to keep you involved in the story. In short, it was a bunch of people I didn’t care about doing a bunch of
things I wasn’t interested in.

The movie seems to try to attach some deeper meaning about the morality of supplying weapons to despots and tyrants, but the connection never really gets made. Maybe I missed the subtler aspects because I was fighting to stay awake. But, there weren’t any other connections either. No real connections between any of the characters in the story, and absolutely nothing between the viewer
and characters.

And on top of all this, its clear that the people who wrote Lord of War have no idea whatsoever about how firearms actually work. When describing a .357 Magnum revolver, Cage says “The six inches of muzzle energy…”. What?! Come on, if you’re going to write a movie about guns, at least hire somebody who knows something about them to proofread the script. Of course, they may have done just that, but he probably fell asleep before he got to that scene.

Things to watch for:

+ Bilbo Baggins a.k.a. Ian Holm as the arms dealer with character.

+ The cheesiest gold AK-47 you’ll ever see in any movie, anywhere.

+ Poor African villagers with no visible tools stripping a massive cargo plane down to almost nothing in less than 24 hours and carrying it all away by hand. Is that even possible for professionals with a full garage of air tools and torches?