Except for pornography, America’s next most unsung pleasures is guns. The Lord of War is an insider account of an international arms trader who supplied all sides in a run of bloody conflicts between 1987 and 2001. Based on actual events \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which exact events and who the protagonist represents in real life is unknown \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the story follows a first generation Russian immigrant reaching for the American dream, a la Scarface.<\/p>\n
From the sale of his first Uzi, to his role as the exclusive supplier to Liberia, Lord of War is the twisted tale of a man who moves contraband from point A to point B, contravenes international regulations and UN embargoes, and looks suave doing it.<\/p>\n
His motives as a character are tenuous, and makes relating to him difficult. For this, and other shortcomings, the story suffers a death blow.<\/p>\n
What works about this movie:
\n1) Nicolas Cage is competent as usual.
\n2) Good to see Jared Leto working again.
\n3) The story moves quickly.
\n4) There is little oversell hype surrounding the project. Bad buzz is not necessarily a detractor.<\/p>\n
What needs improvement:
\n1) Voice over narration. With rare exceptions voice overs signal a train wreck in progress. On the plus side, one knows this immediately, as the narration starts in the first scene.
\n2) Moralizing. Believe it or not, there’s lots of money made selling weapons to individuals one would not invite to a dinner party. Five of the largest arms exporters are the most powerful members in the UN, a point the movie mentions. Thanks for the fifty-year old message, Western Union. <\/p>\n
Verdict: DVD rental.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Except for pornography, America’s next most unsung pleasures is guns. The Lord of War is an insider account of an international arms trader who supplied all sides in a run of bloody conflicts between 1987 and 2001. Based on actual events \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which exact events and who the protagonist represents in real life is unknown […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}