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These days, Nicolas Cage misfires as much as he’s on target.
Like other actors torn between artistic chutzpah and Darwinian box office reality, Cage now seems content to offer audiences split halves of his eccentric id. There is the lantern-jawed superhero of such Jerry Bruckheimer-produced junk food as National Treasure and Con Air, and the earnest thespian of such skewed films as Adaptation (in which he played twin brothers on either side of Hollywood’s commercial/artistic equation) and the recent, flawed The Weatherman.
Lord of War, a savage but scattershot satire about the international arms trade, lands in the latter category, even if it falls short of its lofty, well-intended ambitions.
Cage stars as Yuri Orlov, a Ukrainian from New York’s Little Odessa who ditches his humble surroundings for the death-dealing world of gunrunning. It’s clear from the wry, memorable outset the film — by gifted writer-director Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, The Truman Show) — has its sights aimed at a corrupt global infrastructure that allows and even desires war profiteers to flourish (the U.S. government receives many of Niccol’s slings and arrows).
But armed with his own problematic script, Niccol ultimately proves incapable of delivering the keenly-felt surgical strikes that would have made Lord of War resonate.
Don’t get me wrong — the film, at its sharpest when Cage’s merchant of mayhem is delivering meaty, deadpan narration — is undeniably clever, but it’s also a mine field of cliches and missteps, following Yuri’s trajectory up the arms-dealing food chain.
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Substitute Goodfellas’ underworld or Blow’s drug empire for gun-running — albeit with amped-up sarcasm — and you get the idea.
Also overly familiar? Ethan Hawke’s sadsack Interpol agent (you’d think Uma Thurman dumped him or something) and typecast Jared Leto as Yuri’s cocaine-and-conscience-addled brother.
EXTRAS: War arrives in a barebones disc and two-disc special edition with making-of documentaries, deleted scenes and commentaries.