I got ten of 'em stashed with a case of hand grenades!

The Lord of War is one of the best movies I've seen in awhile. It's also one of the best movies about international relations ever. A nice class could he held with it, Fail Safe, the Fog of War and the Battle of Algiers. All these movies share an unsentimental, realistic view of the world as it is, not as it should be. Even more appealing they do not allow any comfort in the conclusion of their narrative arcs.

The Lord of War follows the career of arms dealer Yuri Orlov. He gets his start in the 1980s and does well, but once the Soviet Union collapses and the largest military in history puts on a fire sale, he gets really wealthy. He moves product to Africa where we get what may be the only mainstream movie view of what went on in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s. Orlov narrates that the West ignored this because it had a white war on its hands in the Balkans. Ouch. A subplot involving Orlov's troubled brother adds an unnecessary bit of melodrama at the end. Don't worry, the actual end is much better.

The movie is loaded with excellent detail. We learn about the importance of the Russian-made AK-47 in international arm sales and in the world (it is on some currency and one flag). We learn about how diamonds finance war (and although unstated terrorism.) We learn how much of the world is implicated in all this. Unlike so many other movies, this movie manages to make its points in a non-didactic manner. It also avoid the standard assumption that if it were not for a bunch of old white men tucked away in DC, we would all be running around throwing flowers in some new Age of Aquarius.

The subtitle of the movie could be "Evil prevails." Orlov says this to feel better about what he does as in if he did not sell weapons to thugs, someone else would. The world, as Orlov shows, and as the news read seems to fit this description.