I saw “Lord of War” (2005), last Sunday and it may be one of the best pictures of the year. It would be hard to watch this and not be moved by its imagery and message. Yuri Orlov, (Nicolas Cage) is a Russian immigrant who decided, early in the film, there is big money in selling arms to real armies fighting real wars. He is clever, slick and had managed not to directly confront the morality of his work as he is being chased by an Interpol agent, Jack Valentine, played (Ethan Hawke).
Orlov sells guns to just about anyone, from just about any source. He looks on detached as some children are lined up against a wall in Lebanon and shot by a firing squad.
“This is not our war,” he tells his brother (played by Jared Leto), who also sees this but finds it hard to ignore.
Orlov soon finds that Africa is the place to do business. The Western powers are so wrapped up in the Balkan situation they don’t notice the brutal civil wars going on in Africa. He soon finds himself dealing with Andre Baptiste Sr. (Eamonn Walker), a fictional president of Liberia. Baptiste seems patterned after the real president of that time period Charles Taylor. As with the movie, in real life, rival military gangs threatened to spill over into other neighboring countries, leading to brutal senseless civil war.
Orlov finds himself in an uneasy alliance with Baptiste, a man so ruthless he test a pistol on one of his own soldiers, killing a young teenager. Interpol agent Valentine is one of the few people in the film to show any concern over the blatant murder and waste of human life caused by the gun trade.
The movie makes the point that the largest arms dealers are countries that all sit on the Security Council of the United Nations and that small-times arms dealers, such as Orlov, are just as easily seen as being more useful than a threat.
A scene toward the end shows an army using their fresh arms to wipe out a village, men, women and children. Orlov can only stand in amazement at the evil perpetrated by such people, including himself.
Some background on Africa:
Orlov points out that the AK-47 is such a popular weapon that it appears on the Mozambique flag.
The modern flag of Mozambique
Original flag of Mozambique independence
But Early in the 1970s, revolutionary leaders such as Somora Machel of the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frente de Libertação de Mozambique--FRELIMO), President Dos Santos, of Angola, President Robert Mugabe and his ruling Zanu Party, of Zimbabwe and Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972) the leader of Ghana, all held out hope of building a new Africa, independent, ending poverty and intertribal violence.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, such ideological hopes have faded and given way to brutal war lords, who use armed thugs to hoard what few resources Africa has to offer. Tribal violence is epidemic, as the movie Hotel Rwanda (2004) also shows. Liberia has been a special problem with armed factions still fighting for power today. There is no evidence that any of the new factions will rule with any more civility than Taylor, or his even more brutal predecessor, Samuel K. Doe.
This may be one of the best movies of the year and a real eye opener.
9 comments:
Wow, this paragraph is pleasant, my sister is analyzing these kinds of things,
thus I am going to let know her.
Stop by my web site - benefits of moringa
If you wish for to grow your know-how simply keep visiting this site and be updated with the most up-to-date gossip posted here.
Feel free to surf to my blog post: cause teeth become
I have learn several just right stuff here. Certainly worth bookmarking for revisiting.
I surprise how a lot effort you place to make such a excellent informative web site.
Also visit my blog post - hair brush
Link exchange is nothing else except it is simply
placing the other person's web site link on your page at suitable place and other person will also do same in favor of you.
my blog post ... light teeth
I've been surfing online more than three hours today, yet I never found any interesting article like yours. It is pretty worth enough for me. Personally, if all webmasters and bloggers made good content as you did, the web will be a lot more useful than ever before.
my website :: teeth whitening products
Hi, I check your blogs regularly. Your writing style is awesome, keep it up!
My homepage raspberry ketones african mango saffron extract weight loss supplements
It's actually very complex in this full of activity life to listen news on TV, so I just use web for that reason, and take the latest information.
Feel free to visit my weblog :: moringa leaves
Hello mates, how is the whole thing, and what you desire to say concerning this article, in
my view its truly remarkable in support of me.
my web page - moringa propiedades
Good day! I know this is kinda off topic but I was wondering if
you knew where I could get a captcha plugin for my comment form?
I'm using the same blog platform as yours and I'm having problems finding one?
Thanks a lot!
My homepage :: where do you buy garcinia cambogia
Post a Comment