A tongue-in-cheek romp through the international arms business, writer-director Andrew Niccol's pitch-black satire charts the rise and fall and rise of Ukrainian-born, Brooklyn-raised gunrunner Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage). The film's tone is set by a bravura opening sequence that follows a single bullet from a factory conveyer belt to its resting place in a child's skull, and by Cage's flawlessly sardonic voice-over. As Niccol's camera pans across a patch of earth thick with spent shell casings, Yuri ponders the statistic that there's a gun for every 12 men, women and children alive today. The only question, he muses, is how to arm the other 11. Ba-dum-
dum. Yur...
Released:
2005
Rated:
R
Length:
122 mins