I’ve been doing book reviews here for a little while. I might as well share my thoughts on movies. I watched Lord of War starring Nicholas Cage last night. It sucked.
I won’t give away all the details in case you want to watch it for yourself. The acting is somewhat flat, but it’s tolerable. What’s truly sucky about the movie is the moral message – it’s muddled. I’m not sure what the main message is. Perhaps the movie’s creator was trying to say something meaningful about warfare, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Perhaps he wanted us all to believe that arms dealers are the source of all evil. Perhaps he wanted to ram home the message that the permanent members of the United Nations security council are also the world’s largest arms dealers.
The irony of making a movie portraying Western nations as the devils behind every third world war is that the most horrible scene in the movie is a scene in which a mother and son are hacked to death by a gang of thugs armed with machetes and the only man with a conscience about it is a Westerner. The whole movie is based on a fictional arms dealer played by Cage and a very loose intrepretation of a very real and very evil character named Charles Taylor, who at one time in the fairly recent past ruled Liberia.
Lord of War sucks because it pushes the idea that the major militaries of the world are behind all the evil in the world when the truth is that evil exists mostly independent of those military forces. Some men, if given a rock, will use it to bash in the heads of anyone they can.
In particular, the scene in which Nicholas Cage and his brother are meeting with a Sierra Leone warlord on a rise above a refugee camp was unrealistic. The scene shows a tent camp filled with unarmed Africans being circled by a single truck filled with machete wielding thugs. While Cage negotiates over a payment of “blood diamonds” for his two trucks filled with guns, RPGs and grenades, his brother watches a child try to escape the camp, followed by the mother. Both of them are hacked to death with machetes while curled up in a fetal position.
The scene tugs at the emotional strings of anyone watching, but the premise of the scene is as flawed as the premise of the movie. Men with machetes and murderous intent don’t need black market guns to kill a camp full of refugees. In real life, they’ll use the machetes if that’s all they have. In real life, Nicholas Cage would never have been able to negotiate his diamonds for guns deal above a refugee camp full of innocents waiting to be slaughtered. They would have been slaughtered prior to his arrival with whatever was available.
Lord of War is based on the same flawed thinking that motivates anti-gun crusaders in the U.S. to try and outlaw personal weapons ownership. Blaming guns for what lives in the hearts and minds of men is silly, and doesn’t solve any long-term problems of men killing other men. You don’t build responsible, healthy societies by dumbing down the population and more than you do by killing anyone who disagrees with you.
Lord of War shows us an inaccurate picture of war as it tries to blame all of Africa’s problems on the West. There are no scenes showing British peacekeepers as they end the civil war in Sierra Leone. There are no scenes showing any of the centuries long history of tribal warfare that has gone on in the region. None of Liberia’s history is put into context. All we are presented with is an amoral arms dealer and the impression that the U.S. government is behind all the violence in Africa because of shadowy arms deals and greedy profiteers. Taking pieces of the truth and rearranging them to fit your worldview is a dangerous business with far reaching consequences.
You might want to watch Lord of War, but I would highly recommend researching the history of the larger events portrayed in the movie prior to doing so. In particular, I would recommend reading the full history of Liberia and Sierra Leone. The U.S. government has certainly been involved in the area for some time, but the real story is much more complex and layered than what we’re shown in the movie.
Pre-Lord of War Homework assignment 1
Pre-Lord of War Homework assignment 2
Pre-Lord of War Homework assignment 3