October 3, 2005

I think I understand what excited some people about Andrew Niccol's Lord of War. But I can't say I join them in the enthusiasm. It's one of those head scratchers, really. Andrew Niccol seems to have permanently settled into being one of those guys who aspires earnestly to true greatness but who just doesn't have the chops to keep up with his own ideas.

Gattaca had a fascinating premise. So did The Truman Show. And SimOne. And while The Truman Show is the most presentable of the group, it also falls flat in the end because its idea is more interesting than its third act.

Niccol's aspiration here seems to be to make a nearly silent film with w\really cool images and endless (really, endless) voice over. The voice over by Nic Cage is so loaded with information and facts that it eventually turns into Charlie Brown's teacher's "waa-waa-waa-waa-waa." The long and the short of it is, "arms dealing bad… arms dealers bad… governments hypocritical."

I would love to see the movie that Niccol wanted to make. Of course, this is the film he wanted to make, though the remarkable amount of voice over makes one wonder whether cuts were forced. But I mean, the movie his heart wanted to make… and that movie is it seems to me, a more intentionally funny arms dealer version of Brian DePalma's Scarface.

The critical focus on Scarface when it came out was overwhelmed by the amount of violence in the movie. But time added perspective to the film's subtext as a metaphor for the ugly flailing of the American dream. Tony Montana came to America and grabbed success the only way he could come up with… he became a drug kingpin. His ruthlessness was the satirical element of that film. In Lord of War, Nic Cage's Yuri Orlov is a first generation American who finds his way out of Brooklyn's Eastern European ghetto by becoming a high-end gun runner. Niccol attempts to keep Orlov close to the vest and to make the world the focus of satirical ridicule.

But Niccol also makes the deadly mistake of trying to be earnest, which softens both the comedic and dramatic material. We don't spend enough "normal time" with the characters other than Yuri to develop a relationship with them, so we never really care about them. His wife is, in the narrative of the film, a piece of ass he jerked off to as a kid. His child is a day player. The great Ian Holm intones as only he can do, but Cage's voice over tells us more about his character than his actions so, outside of the first scene in which he appears. And Jared Leto, who is capable of great things, appears in yet another film in which the color of his eyes is of more interest to the director than what he can bring to the table as an actor.

Perhaps the most painful supporting role is that of Ethan Hawke, who plays a goodie-goodie-two-shoes federal officer who mysteriously turns into an international policeman who has the moral weight of an IPod Shuffle and is forced into ridiculous, from-left-field scene after scene.

For instance, at one point Cage is rambling through a load of voice over while sitting in the back of a cargo plane, when suddenly Hawke shows up besides the plane in a supersonic plane of some kind and when the cargo plane doesn't respond, Hawke's plane starts shooting randomly at Cage's plane… which they suspect of being full of munitions. Is this some sort of Wile E Coyote thing? Is Hawke supposed to be a Wacky Racer? Now… the ensuing scene in which Cage (to make it spoilerlessly brief) supplies a bunch of Africans who live in the middle of nowhere a lot of munitions is promising. And again, frustrating. If you gave a load of high-powered weapons to a bunch of people who have never had those kinds of weapons before, how long before a 7-year-old shoots his mother by mistake, the way any kid playing with guns might? I give it 20 minutes, max. But Niccol is satisfied with the ironic distribution of guns to the poor and unsophisticated. But isn't the whole point of the movie that these characters need to be more responsible for the result of their work? If the film doesn't care, how will we?

The one character that really comes close to being special in the entire film is Eamonn Walker's Andre Baptiste, Sr., a deadly warlord who likes the idea of Orlov knowing what becomes of his weapons. He may be crazy, but he has a philosophy to his insanity.

In one climactic scene, the mid-delivery argument over how the guns will be used leads to the classic "If we don't do the deal they'll kill us." But it fails to finish the obvious… "they'll kill us and they'll massacre everyone they were planning on massacring as well." Why? Not because it's self-evident, but because - I would say - it makes an act of sacrifice seem a little more profound and a little less irrationally stupid. It is a classic moment that defines what is wrong with this film. It could have gone one way, with characters taking a stand and dying for it… or with characters backing off of a stand and losing self-respect in a profound way. Instead, Niccol splits the difference for the hundredth time in the film and you get nothing but a highly dramatic muddle.

I am not saying that Niccol doesn't have talent… or guts. But he desperately needs a strong voice nearby who understands how to push him forward or to rein him in. Either way would probably work. But this middle stuff is crushingly disappointing.

I remember SimOne much the same way. (There is a spoiler here if anyone cares.) The idea was great. Execution was okay. A few new faces were excellent. And then, instead of going all the way with the idea to the most absurd place or hold his idea to the restraints of expectation, he tried to split the difference and lost his way completely. What is interesting in a satire is how people react to the absurdity, not the absurdity itself.

Pity.

E-ME.