Orlov, who emigrated to the United States with his family as a boy, grew up in the crime-ridden Little Odessa section of Brighton Beach. The sequence instantly sucks us into the gun-crazy world of Niccol’s central protagonist Yuri Orlov (Cage). The film’s stunning opening sequence, in which we observe (often in extreme close-up and glistening phallic displays) the life cycle of a bullet from the bullet’s point of view – as it’s manufactured, shipped, sold, and finally lodged between the eyes of an African kid – is a visual tour de force. The movie is a strange amalgam of compelling visuals and fascinating vocational details forged with deep moral ambivalence and often hollow didacticism.
Andrew Niccol, the writer-director of Gattaca and S1mOne (as well as the writer of The Truman Show and The Terminal), shines his usual cynicism on the subject of gunrunning in his new film, Lord of War.