BEFORE: Nicolas Cage carries over from "The Trust" - and didn't I just clear the Nicolas Cage category last fall? I suppose he's one of those actors where I can expect to see three or four films with him in any calendar year, the kind of actor who just never stops working, so probably four or five films are going to get released with him in any calendar year, and I'm always going to be playing catch up. Like Matthew McConaughey, I did a big chain with him last spring, and now I've got another five films with him on my list, and I'm thinking of adding a sixth one just to round out the list and make things line up the way I want. But I'll get to McConaughey in July, first I've got to deal with Cage, then clear out the Robin Williams films, and then do chains with Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck before the month is over.
But just looking at Cage's recent work, I did a search on his name in my cable TV directory, and that produced 4 or 5 films that were released in just the last two years, which I'd never heard of before, and they're all On Demand for $2.99 or $3.99 - the guy just loves to work, apparently, or maybe it's that he hates to turn down any offer. There's a glut on the market, but I'm on a tight schedule now and if I add any more films with him then I won't get to my Father's Day films on time. So three's the limit right now, it's all I have time for.
THE PLOT: An arms dealer confronts the morality of his work as he is being chased by an INTERPOL agent.
AFTER: This is another one of those thinly-veiled semi-true stories - while there was never an arms dealer named Yuri Orlov, he's a composite character possibly based on Viktor Bout. A film production company can't really get sued if they change the name of someone in their own life story, it seems. Bout's currently serving a 25-year sentence for conspiracy to provide material and support to a foreign terrorist organization, conspiring to kill Americans, wire fraud, money laundering, and illegal purchase of aircraft. Bout's defense was that he didn't conspire with terrorists, and in fact he didn't much care who he sold weapons to, as long as they had money. Umm, OK, but if you don't care who buys the merchandise, it's probably pretty easy to end up selling to terrorists. By his logic, if he's guilty, than anyone who owns a gun shop in America could be charged with conspiring to kill Americans. (Hey, wait, have we tried that?)
While I don't know how clever or charming Viktor Bout was, Yuri Orlov is quite clever and charming, and manages to avoid prosecution by ATF agents for a very long time. One clever trick he uses here is to quickly change the name and registration of his freighter ship transporting weapons just before the task force, led by agent Jack Valentine, boards, making them think they're on the wrong vessel, or if they don't fall for that, then this also neatly makes their warrant invalid. Agent Valentine is portrayed as one of those idealistic, workaholic men who just won't quit until they've arrested their target, and also is so squeaky-clean that he won't break the rules just to get an arrest. Hey, he seems like a pretty interesting character, why isn't there a movie about him?
It's a valid question, because instead the movie focuses on someone willing to lie to everyone, including himself, and eventually his wife, about how harmless his arms dealing is. Sure, everyone around the world is buying up the weapons and tanks stolen from the Ukraine just for self-defense, nobody's using all that to bomb villages or arm dissidents or clear out innocent supporters of the opposition party, that's all crazy talk. Orlov is a character who can justify any sin, even cheating on his wife as long as when he's together with his wife, he makes love to her as if she's the only one. Umm, I'm sure she appreciates that, but why can't she also BE the only one?
Orlov started small, it seems, but really got his business going selling to both sides during the 1982 Lebanon War, and then to the Afghans when the Russians tried to invade. He claims to have never sold to Saddam Hussein, not because Orlov had principles, but because Hussein was known for bouncing a lot of checks in those days. No, no, you're doing it wrong, you're supposed to make me want to like the central character in your movie, and him saying something like that just makes me hate him, for all the right reasons. He gets his own brother, Vitaly, involved in the arms-dealing business with him, and after deal in Colombia where a client wants to pay with drugs instead of cash, Vitaly gets hooked on cocaine. Orlov partakes, too, but he seems to be able to handle it better, or doesn't get addicted in the first place - either way, it's a long road back for Vitaly (and just wait, things get even worse...)
Things get better for Yuri when the Iron Curtain falls, and he has a way to access the vast Soviet arsenal through a family connection in Ukraine - but then they get worse again when he's called to help African dictators in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Look, I'm not an expert on military matters - like when the U.S. military pulls out of an operation, do they really leave giant piles of guns behind in a foreign country, just because it's cheaper to buy new ones than to ship all the guns back? That seems like either an odd bit of trivia, or something that a screenwriter just made up because it's convenient for Orlov's story. But my larger question is why this story about an unlikable arms dealer was deemed important enough to make in the first place. Why was such an unheroic figure made the central point of a major film? And what possible redeeming quality did Nicolas Cage see in this character, or is that not even a concern for him?
If that's the case, then Cage shares something in common with Orlov - he doesn't really care about the character he's playing, as long as the money is good. Maybe that's a bit of himself that he saw in Orlov - what other explanation could there be?
Also starring Ethan Hawke (last seen in "Stockholm"), Jared Leto (last seen in "Blade Runner 2049"), Bridget Moynahan (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 2"), Nalu Tripician, Eamonn Walker (last seen in "The Messenger"), Ian Holm (last seen in "The Sweet Hereafter"), Tanit Phoenix (last seen in "Safe House"), Weston Cage Coppola, Sammi Rotibi (last seen in "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice"), Evgeniy Lazarev (last seen in "The Pink Panther 2"), Kobus Marx, Liya Kebede, Jasmine Burgess, Shake Tukhmanyan, Jean-Pierre Nshanian and the voice of Donald Sutherland (last seen in "The Leisure Seeker") with archive footage of Mikhail Gorbachev.
RATING: 3 out of 10 blood diamonds
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