 War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. I just came up with that expression off the top of my head. It's trademarked now. Please, if you ever hear it anywhere else in writing and a song, let me know so I can sue and get the money that I'm earned. Anyway, war is actually good for someone. It's for arms dealers. Specifically, the Lord of War. Based on a real character named Victor Bout, who was recently, I guess, released from a prison because he's not as awful as... No, he's still awful. He's still a terrible individual. A very wealthy, very smooth talking asshole. Or at least that's what Lord of the War the film portrays him as, played by Nicholas Cage. At the time of watching this movie just a few days ago, I thought to myself it's very bizarre that Patreon user Justin Merritt suggested this movie. Like, is it his favorite of all time? He has one movie he gets to request and he picks Lord of War on Patreon at patreon.com. Shout out to his movies. I was so puzzled by the whole situation and it didn't dawn on me until just minutes ago before filming that this character is actually based on what's happening in the news right now with the real dude. But I'm not here to talk about politics or espionage or anything of that nature. No, no, no, no, no. I'm here to talk about movies because this is a movie channel. Lord of War came out in 2005. The film was written and directed by Andrew Nicholl who previously wrote a little script for a movie called I don't know, The Truman Show with Jim Kerry, ever heard of it? It's amazing. And thankfully his writing talent wasn't wasted on one movie because Lord of War is a damn fine film as well. I didn't see this movie when it hit theaters. I was kind of all caged out at the time. He was in so many movies so often that it's like, okay matchstick men's out this week wind talkers is out next week. What is on the agenda from any other actor besides Cage because I'm sick of the snake eyes. I'm sick of the wicker man's of the world. Give me something good. And I slept on the one I should have gone out and watched. Here Cage plays Yuri Orlov, a fictitious character loosely based on a real one, as we've already talked about. He and his brother are immigrants in America. His brother's played by Jared Leto who I'm now entirely convinced is really good at playing strung out losers. Pretty boys. Not so much anything else. Like jokers or morbiuses. It is full on morbentime here though and he's doing a good job. Everyone in this is. The premise is simple. Yuri, not happy with running a restaurant with his family, decides, you know what? I could do something better with my skills which means selling guns of course. That's naturally where someone jumps to as soon as they think, yeah, you know what? The restaurant business isn't for me. Making bullets. Making guns. Peddling them to different countries. That's the ticket. Even better though Yuri doesn't even have to do the manufacturing. He sells the equipment used. Like a pawn dealer who goes directly to your house. Except for in this case, the pawn dealer is pulling down six figures a day and he's flying all over the country under different aliases. He's got a lot of passports. He's got a lot of connections. Not just with foreign governments but right here on the home turf. America. Yuri's damn good at his job. There will always be wars, he says. There will always be guys profiting off of war. So why not me? Why not me? I'm really good at it. That's his justification. For the hundreds of thousands of people he potentially killed by arming regimes by farming little children with guns. We see him running from police running from Ethan Hawke who plays the goody two shoes by the books FBI agent who's going after this dude. But what I really appreciated and was not expecting were the visual effects in this thing. The movie sets the table right away by having this amazing intro that goes through the little journey of a bullet. Through the manufacturing plant down the conveyor belt over the river and through the woods into the skull of a little boy I go. It is a brutal ending. As we watch this bullet fly through the chamber of the gun and into the head of a little boy unsuspecting, innocent. But that really is going to let people know what this movie is all about. It's about profiting off weapons. It's about playing the system to your advantage knowing all the players and then building up such a base that it's almost impossible for you to be locked up and that's exactly what Yuri does. And now we've seen, I guess, a play out in real time that this guy can't even be contained for very long because he knows the right people. It is amazing what douchebags can get away with. They have a charm to them. They have a swagger about them where even though you know they are terrible individuals doing horrible things enriching themselves profiting over the lives of others they do it in such a jovial professional cool way that you can't help but watch and step back and be like oh, I hope he gets out of this one I hope he thwarts the authority again and does something crazy like drop the plane on a little airstrip and give all the guns away to the local children. Haha, that'll show him. Why am I rooting for him? Because Cage is so damn good at this type of character. The sleazeball the professional best of the best at what he does that you're sitting there thinking keep going, keep doing it but in the back of your mind you know he should not be anywhere near a gun ever again. I mentioned the amazing visuals at the beginning but there's creative shots throughout the film. One that jumps out to mine is about midway through. When a small African village is down a giant cargo ship within 24 hours all the way down to the airframe. Well, Nicholas Cage's character sits there on a box, handcuffed just watching knowing it's going to happen and there's nothing he can do to stop it he's almost impressed by their work ethic, by their skill set. Music was a mixed bag for me it's one of those movies where it plays a lot of the songs you've heard a million times in other films like there's that stock catalog that they're going from, it's like alright we got some U2 in here, we got a throw in and we got this song that you've heard in 40 different 90s trailers so while the songs are cool and they definitely work for the movie I've heard them so many times that's like eh, okay here we are again, I've been down this road before Bottom line, this was a fun one to watch, it's nice getting a competent script. Something that has some sharp dialogue so many movies now are just down for the masses I like a little wit, I like some humor, I like references to books and quotes from other things that Nicholas Cage is constantly throwing out that I don't even know about like there's moments where he will randomly refer to some statistic about an animal and its speed or what it does to protect itself and how it relates to something else that's going on in his life and I'm just thinking they just had that they just had that ready to go that reference, I liked it they took some time to work on this script to punch it up and I appreciate that, I appreciate this movie and I appreciate Patreon user Justin Merritt for bringing this movie to my attention so that's Lord of War let me know in the comments if you saw this movie all those years ago or if you for some reason decided to watch it because of what's going on in the news I'd love to hear from you, like the video if you had a good time, please think about subscribing if you haven't as I post tons of content every single week would love to have more people stick around alright, take care thanks again for watching the video since you stuck around I'd implore you once more to check me out on Patreon at patreon.com there are different tier levels of support you can do for this channel there's a one dollar tier all the way up to 30 and with that 30 dollar myth through a level membership you get to request a movie every month and I have to review it give you a shout out and hopefully either love it so much that it's worth talking about or hate it so much that it's fun to make fun of and with that I say thank you and I bid you adieu