'Lord of War' tells the tale of Yuri Orlov, an American gunrunner of Ukrainian descent who, as a young-buck working at his parents’ restaurant, one day realizes that to eat is not the only pursuit that mankind requires—that it must also be able to kill. Inspired by this realization, Yuri goes on to become one of the most successful arms trafficker in the world by acquiring unused, post-war weaponry from developed nations and redistributing it the poorest nations of the world, i.e., Libya, Sierra Leone, etc.
His payment? Blood diamonds, of course. Consequences? None, or so he would have us believe. It’s just a means to an end—a way to fund the lavish lifestyle of his dream wife, Ava Fontaine, a model whom Yuri had been obsessed with all his life, as they had both been raised in the same neighborhood. More importantly, he is good at it. Plus, how the weapons he supplies are subsequently used matters naught to him, for he envisions his trade no different than that of any other salesman:
“Selling guns is like selling vacuum cleaners; you make calls, pound the pavement, take orders. I was an equal-opportunity merchant of death; I supplied to every army but the Salvation Army. I sold Israeli-made Uzis to Muslims...I delivered Communist-made bullets to fascists...I even shipped cargo to Afghanistan while they were fighting my fellow Soviets. I never sold to Osama bin Laden—not on any moral grounds; back then, he was always bouncing cheques.”
However, the truth is that selling guns is nothing like selling vacuum cleaners—especially when those guns are being used to kill countless innocent people courtesy of the bloodlust of the most ignorant, megalomaniacal warlords on the planet. Unfortunately for Yuri, he has to learn this lesson the hard way. Even sadder is the truth that we ourselves as the audience must ultimately accept—that our own governments are in fact just as complicit, if not more-so, in the propagation of evil as are Yuri and the most brutal warlords in the world.
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