Lord of War

I don’t watch many movies. They are politically correct or romantic ‘chick flicks’. Some movies are about violence and sadistic torture. Some of the academy awards go to the violent movies. The producers produce what sells.

I did watch a movie on TV recently, Lord of War. I enjoyed the dialogue and the voice over by the main character about the good and evil of men.

Lord of War is a 2005 political crime thriller film written and directed by Andrew Niccol which stars Nicolas Cage. Cage plays an illegal arms dealer with similarities to post-Soviet arms dealers Viktor Bout and Leonid Minin. The film was officially endorsed by the human rights group Amnesty International for highlighting the trafficking of weapons by the international arms industry.

Yuri brings Vitaly, his brother, played by Jared Leto, along to Liberia, saying he can't trust anyone there. During the transaction, Vitaly sees a group of villagers kill a woman and her child with machetes and tries to convince Yuri to stop.

After the village scene of the people killing others with machetes I thought it would have been appropriate for Yuri to opine on the evils of humans. Yuri could have said something like, “I wonder who the arms dealer is that sells machetes? There probably is not much profit in machetes, but, if the world prohibits the production of guns then the demand for machetes will go up, and so will the profit.”

Lord of War reminds us of the evil of humans. At the end of the movie Yuri thinks about the quote from Edmund Burke, "All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing." Then Yuri says-, evil WILL prevail. The movie failed to explain that evil has been happening between humans for thousands of years, long before gunpowder, and without gunpowder today, evil would still be happening.

You say people are basically good. I say they are basically evil and only act good for their self interest and to prevent punishment.

I challenge you to find one hundred of the best people you know. Fifty men and fifty women, half democrats and half republicans. Half black and half white, Half Christian and half Jews. All good people, the saints of the earth. Then put them on an island with no one else around or no way to contact outsiders. Now, how long do you think it will be before some of those "best" people start practicing evil against each other? How long before someone covets thou neighbor's wife, or husband? How long do you think these "good" people can exist in peace and harmony without laws to constrain their seven deadly sins? The results will likely be the same as happened to the Bounty mutineers who settled on Pitcairn Island in 1790 and what was displayed about human behavior in "Lord of the Flies".

If one of the "Best" people you know starts to produce vegetables on the island the other "Best" people will steal the vegetables. It is easier to steal than to produce vegetables. Then rules will be imposed to make the "Good" people act good. But they will be basically evil, only acting good because it is in their best interest.

This interesting passage was also from the Wikipedia article. “A brief postscript notes that while private arms dealers do a lot of business; the five largest arms exporters – the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, and China – are also the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council”. It seems these countries want to prohibit any competition in the arms trade. They want to remain a cartel in the arms trade, and they have the votes to prohibit competition, and evil prevails.

Charles Tolleson