| Attribute | Details |
| Title | Lord of War |
| Release Date | September 16, 2005 (USA) |
| Director & Writer | Andrew Niccol |
| Genre | Crime, Drama, Satire, Political Thriller |
| Runtime | 122 minutes |
| Budget | $50 million |
| Box Office | $72.6 million worldwide |
| Lead Cast |
• Nicolas Cage (Yuri Orlov) • Jared Leto (Vitaly Orlov) • Ethan Hawke (Jack Valentine) • Bridget Moynahan (Ava Fontaine) • Eamonn Walker (André Baptiste Sr.) |
| Endorsement | Officially endorsed by Amnesty International for highlighting the international arms smuggling trade. |
Trailer
Plot Overview
Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage), a Ukrainian-American living in Little Odessa, New York, decides he doesn’t want to spend his life working in his parents’ kosher restaurant. After witnessing a mob shootout, he realizes that the one thing people will always need is weapons. Alongside his volatile, reluctant younger brother Vitaly (Jared Leto), Yuri enters the illegal arms trade, starting with small-time deals during the 1982 Lebanon War.
Yuri’s business completely explodes in the early 1990s following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He rushes to Ukraine and partners with his uncle, a former Soviet general, to buy up massive stockpiles of military hardware—tanks, helicopters, and millions of Kalashnikov rifles—selling them to dictators and warlords around the globe, most notably the brutal Liberian dictator André Baptiste Sr. (Eamonn Walker).
As Yuri amasses immense wealth, he buys his dream life, marrying a famous supermodel, Ava Fontaine (Bridget Moynahan), who remains oblivious to his true occupation. However, Yuri is relentlessly pursued by Jack Valentine (Ethan Hawke), an incorruptible Interpol agent who wants to bring him down not for money, but for morality. As the pressure mounts, Yuri is forced to confront the deadly, tragic toll his trade takes on his own family and millions of innocents worldwide.
Themes & Behind-the-Scenes Facts
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The Reality of the Trade: Director Andrew Niccol heavily researched the film, basing Yuri Orlov on a composite of real-life international arms traffickers, primarily Viktor Bout (known as the “Merchant of Death”).
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Cheaper to Buy Real Guns: In a bizarre production twist, the filmmakers found that it was actually cheaper to buy 3,000 real, operational AK-47 rifles from international arms dealers than it was to rent prop replicas. After filming concluded, the real weapons were destroyed to prevent them from entering circulation.
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A Cynical Political Message: The film ends on a deeply cynical note, explicitly pointing out that while independent dealers like Yuri are arrested, the world’s five largest arms exporters are actually the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (the US, UK, Russia, France, and China).