Brent's AV Club

Synopsis: This film charts the rise and fall of Yuri Orlov, from his early days in the early 1980s in Little Odessa, selling guns to mobsters in his local neighborhood, through to his ascension through the decade of excess and indulgence into the early 90s, where he forms a business partnership with an African warlord and his psychotic son. The film also charts his relationship through the years with his younger brother, his marriage to a famous model, his relentless pursuit by a determined federal agent and his inner demons that sway between his drive for success and the immorality of what he does.

My Thoughts: The story begins with Nicolas Cage in Brooklyn, where he and his family run a small Ukrainian diner. He wants to do more with his life, but doesn't know what. He cross the street to enter a club, where a Russian mobster is gunned down. That's when the revelation hit him.. People are violent and always want guns. He figures out a way to purchase guns cheaply and sell them to local mobsters. He then realizes that that's only small money.

He sets up a business overseas and begins stockpiling weapons from handguns to tanks and choppers. He finds buyers and becomes a millionaire by selling weapons to underprivileged countries. His brother becomes a drug addict and leaves his brother to do all of the work. Ethan Hawke plays a cop who is hot on his trail trying to bust him. When he finally gets a hold of him, he has nothing to arrest him on because Cage is great at forging papers and finding ways to ship the weapons "legally".

He begins to struggle with the morality of what he's doing. He sells weapons to some soldiers outside of a small African village only to see the soldiers kill everyone in the village with the recently purchased weapons. He wants to get out of the business, but because he's so good, he won't. One sad part of the movie is when Cage is with a president of an African country, he see's a young soldier going through army drills. He asks the president why the 14 year old boy is in the army and the guy replies "A bullet from a 14 year old is no different than a bullet from a 40 year old." And sadly, that's how countries like that think.

Rating: It was a cool movie. The characters weren't real, but gun-running is a real thing and all of the events in the movies are basically based off of real-life events.



Closing Touch: Even though it gets 3 stars from me, id say it's a rental. It's not exactly a movie that you can pop in when you're bored. You could maybe get away with watching it two or three times.