Lord of War - Merchant of Death

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Movie
German title Lord of War - Merchant of Death
Original title Lord of War
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2005
length 117 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
JMK 16
Rod
Director Andrew Niccol
script Andrew Niccol
production Norman Golightly
Andreas Grosch
Nicolas Cage
Andrew Niccol
Chris Roberts
Teri-Lin Robertson
Philippe Rousselet
music Antonio Pinto
camera Amir M. Mokri
cut Zach Staenberg
occupation

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Lord of War - Merchants of Death is a satirical drama from director Andrew Niccol from the year 2005 . Known above all for his science fiction materials , Niccol is the first to place the business of international arms dealers at the center of a Hollywood large-scale production. Following the legacy of the Knights Templar , leading actor Nicolas Cage was one of the highest paid actors of the time. But despite good reviews, the film initially met with little audience approval. Jared Leto and Ethan Hawke can also be seen in other roles , the latter in his second collaboration with the director.

action

The main character Yuri Orlov opens the film by speaking the following sentences directly into the camera: “There are over 550 million firearms in circulation worldwide . That means that every twelfth person on this planet has a firearm. That leads to one question: How do you arm the other eleven? ”The opening credits now show the path of a rifle cartridge in a documentary way - from production in the factory to trading, shipping, insertion into a weapon, firing of the weapon and the Flight of the bullet into the head of an African boy. Since the camera is directly connected to the cartridge, you can follow what is happening from the "first person perspective" of the rifle cartridge.

Afterwards, Yuri told retrospectively from the off , as he grew up and became an arms dealer.

His family immigrated to the United States from Ukraine when he was a child. His family had pretended to be Jewish in the Soviet Union in order to be able to escape. Yuri grew up in Little Odessa in Brighton Beach , New York , where many Ukrainian immigrants live. His family runs a restaurant there. After two people have been shot in front of Yuri's eyes, he and his brother Vitaly decide to sell firearms. He starts small by selling Uzis and M16 rifles from the 1982 Lebanon War . Soon he meets Jack Valentine, a tireless and incorruptible Interpol agent, for the first time on one of his smuggling ships. But before it appears, he has the ship's name repainted and hoists another flag, which he uses to trick Valentine who has to let him go.

In order for Yuri to be able to trade in arms on a large scale, he proposed a collaboration to the renowned arms dealer Simeon Weisz at an arms fair in West Berlin in the 1980s, but the latter refused and called him an amateur.

Yuri sells weapons on a large scale for the first time in 1984 after the suicide bombings in Beirut, Lebanon and to the brutal dictator of Liberia , André Baptiste.

In the course of the film he sets up four rules:

  1. Never let your own merchandise shoot you.
  2. Always have a surefire plan to get paid.
  3. Never pick up a gun yourself and join your customers.
  4. Never go to war, especially not with yourself.

He is shot after a deal with a Colombian drug lord who insists on paying Yuri with cocaine . Then the brothers begin to use some of the drugs themselves. After two weeks of seclusion and excessive cocaine use, Vitaly becomes addicted. Yuri sends him to a rehab and is now a sole entrepreneur. He begins courting the long-sought-after model Ava Fontaine and uses his money and lies to get her to marry him. Soon after, their son will be born. Yuri hides his arms deals from Ava and instead pretends to be in the transportation business. She suspects his crime, but asks him not to tell her about it.

The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union marked the turning point in Yuri's career. He got in touch with his uncle Dimitri, an army general, and bought cheap tanks and Kalashnikovs from the Ukrainian army. Valentine almost succeeds in arresting Yuri while loading a Mi-24 attack helicopter , but the latter exploits a loophole in the law by stating that the helicopter and the associated launch containers and missiles are shipped together, but delivered to different customers.

Shortly afterwards, Uncle Dimitri dies from a car bomb with which Yuri's competitor Weisz actually wanted to kill him.

During a search of Yuri's household garbage, Agent Valentine discovers Yuri's next target: Sierra Leone after piecing together shredded documents . There will be light arms laden transport aircraft of the type 12 An-Antonov by an interceptor (in the film a Aero L-39C "Albatros" ; one in the script MiG-25 Foxbat ) prompted the air force weapons use, the nearest airport in Kabala to control. To avoid possible arrest, Yuri urges his pilots to land on a dirt road in the savannah . To prevent the authorities from finding evidence when they arrive, Yuri is giving away the entire cargo to the population. When Valentine finally arrives, there is nothing left to arrest Yuri for. In the conversation the two of them had, Valentine condemned Yuri's business and made it clear to him that nine out of ten war victims were killed by AK-47 assault rifles - the ones Yuri sells. Valentine adds that there are more prestigious jobs for himself, e.g. B. Keep an eye on nuclear weapons depots. In his opinion, the nuclear weapons are deep in their silos, but Yuri's AK-47 assault rifles are the real weapon of mass destruction. Since Valentine cannot arrest Yuri, even after Yuri's own testimony about the legal situation, he only detains him for 24 hours. During this time, the population dismantles the transport aircraft into its individual parts and transports them away.

Liberia's dictator Baptiste gives Yuri a "present": the shackled Simeon Weisz, whom Yuri is supposed to shoot as revenge for his slain uncle. He hesitates, which is why Baptiste offers to do it together. Baptiste brings Yuri's hand to the gun and offers him that he can say "Stop!" At any time, but he only does so after Baptiste has pulled the trigger. Yuri then takes heavy drugs and walks the streets dazed. A little girl with an amputated arm asks him if her arm will grow back, because the white man certainly knows the answer. Frightened by this sight, he stumbled on when the ghost of Simeon Weisz appeared to him in a dark alley and warned him to take sides. Yuri apparently has unprotected sex with a prostitute after being beaten by two armed men and not shot due to a jam .

Meanwhile, Valentine Yuri's wife Ava reveals his real job. Yuri then promises her to stop and earns his money for six months with legal work. But Baptiste and his son use a meeting of the United Nations to visit Yuri. They manage to win him over for further business with a huge diamond. Ava secretly follows him and finds evidence in his container office that he's back to work as an arms dealer. She leaves him with her son. Yuri assumes that the fact that he used his only son's date of birth as the code for the container combination lock was a decisive factor in her departure.

Yuri persuades the reluctant Vitaly to accompany him to Liberia and finally to Sierra Leone. Vitaly gets a remorse when he notices at the meeting point how the negotiating partners are circling the tent village of civilians who are supposed to be massacred with weapons. Then he watches a boy and his mother being brutally murdered. He tries in vain to get Yuri to break off the deal, but the latter realizes the danger they would be in if they didn't go through with the deal. Vitaly blows up half of the assault rifles delivered with a hand grenade , which also kills André Baptiste's son. Vitaly is then shot and cannot prevent the massacre of the villagers.

A projectile in Vitaly's chest that was missed during the removal of the bullets is noticed during the transfer of the body by New York Customs, whereupon Yuri is arrested. Together with the findings from Yuri's container office, Valentine thinks that she has enough evidence for a lifelong conviction against him and does not understand Yuri's calm despite the overwhelming burden of proof. Yuri explains to him that he is very well aware of the seriousness of his situation, after all he has been abandoned by his family, disinherited by his parents and his brother killed. He tells Valentine that his boss, the President of the United States, is in fact still the most successful arms dealer in the world. An evil - undoubtedly - that was this Yuri Orlov, but a necessary evil. Because gun dealers like him only support the unofficial and not “politically capable” aspects of the government's will. Valentine herself should therefore enjoy his fleeting, brief triumph. As Yuri predicts, Valentine will next be asked out of the interrogation room (which is similar to a theater stage). A senior army officer and old business associate of Yuri finally tells Jack Valentine to let the man go.

After the day of his detention, he continues as before. In the final scene, he bribes customs officers in the Sahara during a delivery of arms in order to bring weapons across the border. The film ends with the same camera angle as at the beginning of the film. Orlov stands there again and draws a conclusion: “Do you know who will take over the earth? Arms dealer. Because everyone else is way too busy shooting each other. That is the secret of survival. Never go to war. Especially not with yourself. ”The camera pans to the cartridge cases on the floor and the picture goes black. The credits note that the world's five largest arms exporters - the United States, Russia, France, Great Britain and China - are also the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.

Real references

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The diamonds from Liberia featured in the film, including an improbably large one, are reminiscent of one of the largest cut diamonds, 189.6 carats, kept in the Moscow Kremlin's Diamond Fund exposition and named after Count Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov , who made it 1755 had given Catherine II , who had him installed in the scepter of the Russian tsars . Some sources state that the Orlov diamond is a part of the Great Mughal , which is also made in the classic Indian rose cut .

The political background is realistic. All deliveries shown in the film go to actual crisis areas. From the drug-financed contra war to the support of the civil war in Lebanon to the West African conflicts that are settled over blood diamonds , the means of payment are also largely credible. The huge sell-off and theft of the remnants of the arsenals of the Soviet army are portrayed very drastically.

An important role is that of the Liberian President, whose name is André Baptiste in the film. The similarities with Charles Taylor , who was displaced by international pressure, are not only more than clear visually. The last name "Baptiste" used in the film could also be a reference to Charles Taylor, who was a Baptist minister . Taylor's strictly authoritarian course and his numerous human rights violations are adequately portrayed. In particular, his support for the barbaric Revolutionary United Front is historically correct, and so is the fact that the Americans (Weisz is probably caught during an arms delivery to the rebels) for Taylor's opponents. In the film, Baptiste first came to power as the self-proclaimed president. The elections that were held are heavily questioned in the film, and Baptiste is said to have been electoral fraud . However, in contrast to Baptiste's son, Taylor's son did not die in an arms delivery, but is currently imprisoned in Miami .

The senior US military officer ( spoken by Donald Sutherland in English ) who protects Yuri is called "Colonel Oliver Southern," an allusion to the real Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North who was involved in funding a contra - Nicaraguan project, where illegal arms sales to Iran were carried out (see also: Iran-Contra-Affair ). The name Kono , which Yuri had painted over the old ship name Kristol , is also the name of a province with large diamond deposits in Sierra Leone . Kristol, in turn, is the name of Irving Kristol , an American neoconservative who advocated US military hegemony worldwide and a comprehensive revision of international law.

At the end of the film you can read that the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia and China (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council ) are the five largest arms exporters . That is not entirely correct: In the year of publication 2005, after the USA, Russia, (not mentioned) Germany , France and Great Britain were the five largest arms exports, China was only 11th at that time (according to the ranking of the " Stockholm International Peace Research Institute "(SIPRI))

After filming Lord of War was over , Nicolas Cage joined the Control Arms organization .

Emergence

Pre-production

Andrew Niccol wrote the script in just four months because he was gathering information on the subject before the idea for the film, in the hope of being able to incorporate it into a film later. In order not to let the film get boring, he did not focus on the whole story of the arms trade, but on the protagonist Yuri Orlov after Viktor Anatoljewitsch But . It turned out to be very difficult to depict this character believably, because the character should be fairytale-like, charming and at the same time cynical .

actor Dubbing voice role
Nicolas Cage Martin Keßler Yuri Orlov
Jared Leto Simon hunter Vitaly Orlov
Ethan Hawke Andreas Fröhlich Jack Valentine
Bridget Moynahan Alexandra Wilcke Ava Fontaine
Jean-Pierre Nshanian Roland Hemmo Anatonly Orlov
Sammi Rotibi Charles Rettinghaus André Baptiste Jr.
Eamonn Walker Pure beauty André Baptiste Sr.
Tanit Phoenix Ilona Brokowski Candy
Jerry Mofokeng Uli Krohm Ernest
Liya Kebede Ann have a lot Faith
Jasmine Burgess Victoria Storm Gloria
Shake Thukmanyan Astrid Bless Irina Orlov
Tony Kgoroge Tobias Master Mbizi
Yevgeni Lazarev Peter Groeger Uncle Dimitri
Sir Ian Holm Friedrich Georg Beckhaus Simeon Weisz
Donald Sutherland Tilo Schmitz Colonel Oliver Southern

When Niccol designed the character Yuri Orlov, he did not have Nicolas Cage in mind from the start. But when he finished the script, no other actor was an option. Cage accepted the role without hesitation. In order to make the arms dealer credible in the film, Cage spoke to well-known arms dealers in order to be able to prepare perfectly for the role.

Niccol cast Ethan Hawke for the character of Agent Valentine, who was clearly interested in the role and the story. The two have been friends since filming Gattaca in 1997. What estimates Niccol on the role of the agent Valentine, is that this not a saint and do-gooder was. He is a person with a big ego who wants to convict the bad guy , but at the same time seeks fame.

Even if there is a discussion about the global arms trade in the media, Lord of War is the first feature film that deals so intensively with this current topic. This proximity to actual events became a problem in securing funding for the project. Since the film does not shy away from showing the role of the United States in the global arms trade, and the script was involuntarily submitted a week before the start of the war in Iraq , the financing was blocked by American funds. With this in mind, it took producer Philippe Rousselet a year and a half to find an investor. But eventually a group of foreign investors was found who agreed to finance the film.

Filming

The filming began on August 2, 2004 in New York. It was shot in several different locations, including Manhattan and Brighton Beach in Coney Island . Nine days later, the team flew to Cape Town , South Africa , to shoot there for ten weeks. The shooting came to an end on November 2, 2004 and after another three days of shooting in the Czech Republic . The Eastern European landscape and a former Soviet military base were used for the film location in Ukraine.

The actors and the film crew were impressed by the very high effort and urge for perfection, with Andrew Niccol his research had operated on his screenplay before starting the job. Niccol acquired tons of background information and expertise to make the film realistic. So he decided to shoot in one of the more dangerous areas of Cape Town. Although there were numerous safety concerns, Niccol thought the scenery was perfect. It is a street scene in the Liberian capital Monrovia .

The South African landscape was not only suitable for depicting several African , Asian and South American countries, but also had to be used in parts for areas such as the Ukraine or the Caribbean . The advantage is obvious, because the protagonist Yuri travels to a large number of different countries in the film.

The real T-72 battle tanks lined up in the film belonged to a Czech arms dealer who later wanted to sell the 50 or so tanks to Libya and therefore urged the scenes to be shot quickly. Before the recordings, NATO had to be informed so that it would not have concluded a troop movement based on satellite images. Equally owned transport aircraft of the type Antonov An-12 a Russian arms dealer ( Viktor Bout ) of this a few weeks before shooting for a real arms deal in Congo had used. However, no real weapons were used in the movie scene. In the scene that shows a bunker with 3000 AK-47s , it was actually filled with real assault rifles . Director Andrew Niccol said it was cheaper to buy 3,000 real rifles than to have 3,000 replicas made and used vz. 58 are made in the Czech Republic and look very similar to the Russian AK-47.

The German dubbed version was produced by Berliner Synchron GmbH under the direction of Tobias Meister , for which Michael Nowka wrote the dialogue book.

music

The score was provided by composer Antonio Pinto . For the most part, it consists of a quiet bed of sound in which acoustic guitar playing dominates. Besides music Pintos accompanies Oldie For What It's Worth by Buffalo Springfield the opening credits of the film. Other pieces of music used include Cocaine by Eric Clapton , Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah in the version by Jeff Buckley , Fade Into You by Mazzy Star, Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky, Money by The Flying Lizards , the Ride of the Valkyries by Richard Wagner, La Vie En Rose by Grace Jones and Glory Box by Portishead .

A Soundtrack - CD to The Lord of War was on 24 February 2006 by noble records published. It comprises 15 titles.

Promotion and publication

There are a variety of different movie posters . The American movie poster shows Nicolas Cage's head to shoulders on a white background. From a distance it looks like a photo, but on closer inspection you can see that the cage consists entirely of individual, differently colored gun cartridges . The German movie poster shows Nicolas Cage with a classy suit and a suitcase, similar to the movie poster for the film Family Man , on which Cage is shown almost identically. A large explosion, blue sky, and airplane can be seen in the background. On the French , Italian and many other language film posters, Nicolas Cage is shown with a suit and suitcase, as on the German one. However, in these versions it stands in a sea of cartridge cases . This is also the location of the beginning and end of the film.

The film had a budget of 50 million US dollars and grossed 72 million US dollars worldwide. There was also a successful DVD sale. In the United States, over 2.5 million DVDs were sold in the first week alone.

The DVD , released in Germany on August 8, 2006, contains not only the film but also extensive bonus material. These include a 20-minute making-of , seven deleted scenes, an audio commentary by the director Andrew Niccol, an Amnesty International spot with Nicolas Cage, various trailers and a 15-minute documentary entitled "A lucrative business - international arms trade" . The image transmission is in anamorphic widescreen (2.40: 1) and the sound in Dolby Digital 5.1 . The DVD version released in the UK includes, as an opening credits, a contribution from Amnesty International in which an AK-47 is presented on a teleshopping channel and offered for sale. The Blu-ray for the film was released on March 4, 2011 .

reception

This section consists only of a cunning collection of quotes from movie reviews. Instead, a summary of the reception of the film should be provided as continuous text, which can also include striking quotations, see also the explanations in the film format .

The criticism aggregators Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic classify the film as “Fresh” and “Generally Recommended”. The central topic was well received, whereas the satirical implementation was not consistently perceived as having a confident style.

  • "Honest, sobering and so absurdly funny as in Andrew Niccols, Lord of War - Merchant of Death 'is hardly possible. A brand new, yet hardly noticed problem topic, the global arms trade, with a legendary leading actor Nicolas Cage, results in an impressive, contemporary and terrifying masterpiece that is hard to beat in terms of explosiveness. ”- Moviepilot
  • Roger Ebert wrote in 2005 in the Chicago Sun-Times “Lord of War is a desolate comedy” which is “as“ funny ”as the film Catch-22 “, but the film is also “an angry outcry against the arms trade . "
  • Manohla Dargis wrote in the New York Times, “Like everything else in the film, Mr. Cage's appearance is good to look at, even if it is never believable because the director never resolves the separation between the function of the star (to entertain) and that of his role ( repel). "
  • Filmstarts is of the opinion that "thanks to a top cast, explosive subject matter and such a large dose of cynicism ", "self-confessed non-cynics will give a laugh or two."
  • Sascha Westphal von der Welt found it remarkable how sympathetic Yuri Orlov was drawn: “You can identify with him without much hesitation, but in the end the moment comes when you distance yourself not only from him, but also from the system, that makes use of it. Niccol wants to wake up his audience, and for that he first has to confront them with his own cynicism. Seen in this way, Lord of War proves to be a virtuoso agitprop work of art. There is no room for subtle nuances and balanced political analyzes. "
  • Andreas Busche from epd-Film was bothered by the cynicism: “Andrew Niccol describes the scenarios correctly, but without drawing the appropriate conclusions from them. He simply confuses the causalities or sacrifices them - all the more annoyingly - the next punch line. "
  • Blickpunkt: Film is satisfied with the film, but the authors believe “this mixture of a raised index finger and biting cynicism will not necessarily be everyone's style”. "Inclined viewers, on the other hand, will have their fun and, in addition to the complex narration, will also be on fire for the captivating camera work by Amir Mokri and the soundtrack with a smart selection of songs."

The film received a film award from the National Board of Review in 2005 in the category Special Recognition For Excellence In Filmmaking .

Web links

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  1. ^ Certificate of Release for Lord of War - Merchant of Death . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , January 2006 (PDF; test number: 104 977 K).
  2. ↑ Age rating for Lord of War - Merchant of Death . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ Wesley Johnson: Hollywood's Top Earners. Press Association Newsfile, July 23, 2008.
  4. ↑ Andrea Böhm: businessman of war. In: DIE ZEIT , edition 15/2006 of April 6, 2006 ( [1] )
  5. ↑ SIPRI Database Arms Exports: SIPRI Arms Transfers Database of Top 50. In: sipri.org , (English).
  6. ↑ a b c d Interview with Andrew Niccol ( Memento from November 16, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) from 2005 by Sara Michelle Fetters (en)
  7. ↑ Interview with Andrew Niccol from September 15, 2005 by Todd Gilchrist (en)
  8. ↑ a b cinefacts.de ( Memento from February 16, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Background information on the film
  9. ↑ a b c cinefacts.de ( Memento from February 13, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Information on production
  10. ↑ movieweb.com ( Memento from December 13, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Film information from September 10, 2005 by Heather Newgen (en)
  11. ↑ filmflip.de Film Info , July 11, 2006
  12. ↑ Interview with Andrew Niccol from September 14, 2005 by Devin Faraci (en)
  13. ↑ BoxOfficeMojo
  14. ↑ tvspielfilm.de ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) DVD sales figures
  15. ^ "Guns for Sale", Amnesty International advertising film ( Memento from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  16. ^ Review of September 16, 2005 on the pages of Roger Ebert (en)
  17. ↑ Manohla Dargis : Lord of War (2005) - Guns Are Evil. Everybody Should Have One. September 16, 2005, accessed on August 16, 2010 (English): “Like everything else in this film, Mr. Cage's performance is watchable if never credible because his director never resolves the disconnect between this star's function (to entertain) and that of his character (to repel). "
  18. ^ Filmstarts.de Film review by Alina Bacher
  19. ↑ welt.de Film review from February 16, 2006 by Sascha Westphal
  20. ↑ epd-film.de ( Memento from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Film review by Andreas Busche
  21. ↑ Blickpunkt: Film, film criticism and review