Romance and Romantic Destination News

Andrew Niccol’s first two films as writer/director, 1997’s Gattaca and 2002’s S1m0ne, were hollow, sterile sci-fi masquerading as earnest satire: The former told of a near future in which parents could genetically engineer perfect children; the latter proffered an actress who became the most famous and beloved movie star in Hollywood, though she existed only as bytes on a hard drive. And when totaling the works on Niccol’s résumé, one can’t discard his 1998 screenplay for The Truman Show, a prophetic look at reality television long before its ascendancy. Despite the latter movie’s acuity, the three films ultimately added up to very little: They were stories in which people weren’t who they believed or wanted to be, because they weren’t much of anything at all. At best they were chimeras; at worst, metaphors.

Lord of War’s Yuri Orlov, played by Nicolas Cage, is easily the best character Niccol has written – a wretch of a beast who exists in this world and not in the daydreams of a filmmaker prone to using science fiction to make his dull points. Yuri, a Ukrainian émigré biding his time in New York’s violent, gangster-run Little Odessa, is a peddler of weapons, from pistols to tanks to attack helicopters, who does what he does solely to make as much money as possible; he takes no sides, except his own. Yuri is not a symbol of anything other than greed run amok, and he is nothing more than a bad man who believes himself good because he can provide for his cover-girl wife (Bridget Moynahan) and their son. Not once in Lord of War does Yuri suffer a crisis of conscience, because he has none. Such weaknesses are left to other people, who will inevitably find themselves staring down the wrong end of the merchandise.

Which is not to say Lord of War doesn’t proselytize the way Niccol’s other movies do; it’s just as guilty of preaching while entertaining, of inducing guilt and shame from the audience it attempts to amuse. Niccol can’t seem to help himself: He interrupts thrilling moments, scenes of dazzling technical prowess or ones of dark, kinetic humor, to remind us that Yuri is ruinous and immoral, an accessory to genocide the world over. Ethan Hawke, as the Interpol agent Jack Valentine, chasing Yuri through war zones in Africa and Russia and elsewhere, doesn’t deliver lines of dialogue; he speechifies, lecturing Yuri about his horrific job as a merchant of death. “You get rich by giving the poorest people on the planet the means to continue killing each other,” Jack tells Yuri, whom he’s handcuffed and left to bake in the West African sun; “Nine out of 10 war victims today are killed with assault rifles and small arms, like yours,” he reminds, too, in case we skipped class that day. One expects a pop quiz after the credits; thank God this job requires a film critic to bring a notepad.