Lord of War

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A bleak comedy, funny in a "Catch-22" sort of way, and at the same time an angry outcry against the gun traffic.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

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.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Cage is brilliant.

Variety Robert Koehler

Brimming with cinematic confidence, cynicism, chutzpah plus dramatic bungles, Andrew Niccol's ambitious Lord of War views today's international arms trade through its anti-hero.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Tells Yuri's story with the same bravado and stylishness as Scorsese at his finest, with bigger-than-life characters and situations splashing across the screen in breathtaking scale.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Lord of War skims along like a dance routine. Political morality doesn't usually get such fleet choreography in the movies.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

An arresting and disturbing piece of work that gets its message across without coming off as overly preachy.

The New Yorker David Denby

A raffishly ironic and insinuating movie--and probably the most sheerly enjoyable film of the year so far.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

A bravura, resonant performance by Nicolas Cage, combined with some hard questions raised about American responsibility for the worldwide glut of firearms, make the film close to a must-see, if not a must-love.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Picture how insufferable "GoodFellas" would be if it climaxed with a federal agent making a speech about the victims claimed by organized crime.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Lord of War is advocacy entertainment -- an act of mainstream provocation -- and, for the most part, it works unusually well.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

But the movie soars as docudrama. Niccol's model seems to have been Scorsese's "GoodFellas" and, like that film, the blitzkrieg of images and rapid-fire narration takes us on a breathtaking inside tour of a scary world. It's an extraordinary expose.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Lord Of War charges bravely and relentlessly into volatile territory, and it's hard to leave unscarred by the experience.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

It's this moralizing, this slamming down of a stop sign every time the movie wants to rev its engines, that keeps Lord of War from being great. But it's three-fourths of a great movie, if nothing else, it has more brains and balls than most studio releases, for which it's to be commended and recommended.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

A caustic satire masquerading as an action-adventure. Or maybe it's Hollywood escapism masquerading as satire.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

Taken as a whole -- and it kills me to write this -- it just doesn't add up to much.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Niccol is too good a screenwriter (The Truman Show, Gattaca) not to know that Hollywood cliches are hell on a film's political bite. They muzzle it.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Both script and performance, however, waver between black comedy and more routine international-thriller concerns.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A black comedy, a character study, and a thriller, Lord of War lacks the gritty, hell-bent hilarity of David O. Russell's contemporary war pic, "Three Kings."

USA Today Mike Clark

Intelligent but not particularly involving.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Niccol doesn't always get the mix right, and the tone here is inconsistent. But the movie remains compelling, largely because of Cage's dry, deadpan delivery.

Village Voice Jessica Winter

Niccol's fatal error is in making the protagonist at once amoral and insipid, an admixture thickened by Cage's loquacious yet stoned voice-over and Moynahan's moist-eyed tremblings as the trophy wife.

Empire Kim Newman

It would like to be "Traffic" with guns, but comes out more like "Blow" with bullets.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Of course, given the abundance of voice-over, Nic Cage is unburdened from any great need to act. But he narrates splendidly, delivering the stuff with an unrepentant glee laced with liberal doses of irony.

Premiere Ryan Devlin

The film falters in the moments where it can't decide if it's an entertainment about a likable criminal, or a serious commentary on the exploitation of the Third World.

LA Weekly Tim Grierson

Incorporating surrealist humor and an ironic patina, Lord of War tries for irreverent satire, but the film (and especially Cage) is too muted and distant.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The film is always at least mildly interesting, because international arms dealing is a fairly compelling issue, but it's never as informative as a good documentary nor as engrossing as a good narrative. It's a hybrid that's frustrating in two distinct ways.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

The movie is a strange amalgam of compelling visuals and fascinating vocational details forged with deep moral ambivalence and often hollow didacticism.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Any time you're watching a film in which the statistics in the voice-over have more intrinsic drama than the protagonists' lives, you know you're in trouble.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Like everything else in this film, Mr. Cage's performance is watchable if never credible because his director never resolves the disconnect between this star's function (to entertain) and that of his character (to repel).

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The result is a dead pile of information in search of a movie.