History Film / LordOfWar

* ArmsDealer:
** Yuri Orlov (the eponymous "Lord of War"), Simeon Weisz, and some minor characters distribute weapons to various parties.
** In a meta sense too. A real Czech dealer was actually used for props for the film - it turned out to be cheaper to borrow 3000 real [[http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Lord_of_War#SA_Vz.58 Czech SA Vz. 58 rifles]], visually similar but totally different to the [=AK=], than to buy 3000 replicas! The row of tanks were not only real, but were rented from an actual arms dealer (the staff worked closely with several while filming). The scene had to be rushed because the dealer had a buyer and unexpectedly needed them back. On a hilarious note, the filmmakers actually had to inform NATO that the satellite images they were getting of platoons of tanks gathering was not in preparation for invasion.

* BornLucky: Yuri. He narrowly avoids a whole lot of trouble from badly concealed weaponry entirely by chance - had Valentine chosen to watch the potatoes for five more seconds, he'd have noticed the crate marked "M16"... but the epitome of Yuri's luck almost defies belief. There are very few ways a white, rich man can walk in a war-torn African city on a high and survive despite having unprotected sex with a prostitute, an encounter with a pack of hyenas, and two gangsters who would have shot him if their [=AKs=] had not jammed (which he proceeds to give them his professional advice on how to fix so they won't do that.) The whole sequence serves to show how Yuri has sunk so low that he can't even die. At this point Yuri himself thinks he's cursed rather than blessed.

** When Liberian dictator Andre Baptiste casually [[BadBoss guns down one of his own men]] in front of Yuri, the latter instinctively reacts with outrage only to have every gun in the room pointed at him. He covers this up by claiming that the gun Baptiste shot the guy with is now a piece of "used" merchandise, and Yuri won't be able to sell it to anyone else now. Baptiste finds this excuse oddly amusing, and makes Yuri his regular arms contact. Yuri's excuse is so funny because as a black market arms dealer virtually every gun he ever sells is "used", and such an exclamation can be read as a self-deprecating joke about his own out of place 'first world' demeanor.

* KarmaHoudini: Yuri is, sort of, but at a [[PyrrhicVictory price]]. He loses [[spoiler:his brother, his love, his child, and is disowned by his parents,]] but he doesn't really care - only that cash keeps flowing in.

* WeaponsUnderstudy: As mentioned above, many of the Soviet weapons are actually copies that were produced by the Chinese or Soviet satellite states.

* ActuallyPrettyFunny: When Liberian dictator Andre Baptiste casually [[BadBoss guns down one of his own men]] in front of Yuri, the latter instinctively reacts with outrage only to have every gun in the room pointed at him. He covers this up by claiming that the gun Baptiste shot the guy with is now a piece of "used" merchandise, and Yuri won't be able to sell it to anyone else now. Baptiste finds this excuse oddly amusing, and makes Yuri his regular arms contact. Yuri's excuse is so funny because as a black market arms dealer virtually every gun he ever sells is "used", and such an exclamation can be read as a self-deprecating joke about his own out of place 'first world' demeanor.

** The film starts in an ammunition factory in Odessa. It does not exist and never did.
** While on his drug trip, Vitaly forms a cocaine outline of Ukraine. It's backwards, but this could be because he's high and working off memory. Yuri tells him he'll overdose before he gets to Kiev, which is not present on the outline. Unless he meant Kiev ''region'', which would require snorting half of the line.

* ArtisticLicenseReligion: Yuri states that his mother is Catholic. While not impossible, it is more likely that she would have been Orthodox, which was the majority faith of Christians in the Soviet Union and Ukraine in particular (Catholics make up a small minority). Western regions of Ukraine do have "Greek Catholics" (basically, Orthodox who obey the Pope), but they are even less common in Odessa.

* AffablyEvil: Yuri himself, who is the film's protagonist and at the same time, at his best, an amoral arms dealer.

** Yuri, after finding he had unprotected sex in Liberia, claims "In the most AIDS infested region of the globe, where one in four is infected ..." This is wrong both for West Africa and Liberia in particular, where HIV prevalence has never reached 2% since its identification. In 1995 -- when this scene takes place -- only 23 people were HIV-positive in the entire country. Yuri's claim of "one in four" is only true in a few Southern African countries.

** At one point, Valentine manages to corner Yuri but he doesn't have any concrete evidence to justify arresting him (since Yuri already had the local villagers take all the guns away). Valentine instead cited that he's legally allowed to 'detain' Yuri for 24 hours and he's gonna use every single second of it and handcuff Yuri to a briefcase and strand him in a middle of nowhere, reasoning that one day of Yuri not going about his gunrunning business means one more day given to the innocent people who would've been killed by the guns he's selling. Yuri also darkly implies Valentine left him out there in hopes that the African wilderness or bandits would kill him.

* BullyingADragon: Yuri scolding Andre Baptiste for firing a sample gun at a nearby soldier, and then repeatedly correcting his grammar comes off as this, considering Yuri is smack dab in the middle of the other man's country, surrounded by hundreds of (possibly his own) guns. Andre, however, is pretty amused by Yuri's candidness.

* CatchPhrase: Andre Baptiste Sr. responds "Thank you... but I prefer it my way" every time Yuri corrects his grammar.

** Central Monrovia (Liberia capital) is shown as nothing but slums. This is not true. If Andre Baptiste or Yuri himself wanted, finding a better hotel would not be a problem.

* FailureHero: Valentine realises at the end he's nothing more than this. A rare breed of a law enforcement officer who will not stoop to unscrupulous methods to bring wanted men to justice. But he's oblivious as to how the world works, or the painful fact that his boss the US President ships more weapons everyday than Yuri can manage in a year.

* TheMafiya: They briefly appear early on, as Yuri talks about how murder was so commonplace in Little Odessa right before he actually witnesses [[AuthorityEqualsAsskicking a mob boss take down two would-be assassins]].

** Nearly all of the gangsters, drug kingpins, and warlords that Yuri does business with do not try for a BallisticDiscount because Yuri is a valuable supplier and killing him would not only eliminate the opportunity for return business, but serve as a giant red flag to other potential arms dealers that this particular client cannot be trusted. For instance, the warlord in Sierra Leone doesn't kill Yuri even after [[spoiler:Vitali kills one of his allies and]] destroys half the weapons that Yuri brought him. He just swipes away half of Yuri's payment since he's still entitled to the other half.

* DidYouJustFlipOffCthulhu: Yuri scolding Andre Baptiste for firing a sample gun at a nearby soldier, and then repeatedly correcting his grammar comes off as this, considering Yuri is smack dab in the middle of the other man's country, surrounded by hundreds of (possibly his own) guns. Andre, however, is pretty amused by Yuri's candidness.

--> ''They say, "Evil prevails when good men fail to act." What they ought to say is, "Evil prevails."''

** Yuri actually paraphrases that this is the way of the world:
--> '''They say, "Evil prevails when good men fail to act." What they ought to say is, "Evil prevails."'''

* TheBadGuyWins: [[spoiler:Yuri gets away with his gunrunning crimes and gets to continue supplying weapons to already war-torn countries as a middleman for the powerful.]] [[spoiler:But he's also struck by PyrrhicVictory, as come the end of the film, he's either lost or alienated everyone he cared about and has only the soul-sucking practice of arms-dealing to look forward to.]]

* ByTheBookCop: Jack Valentine. [[spoiler:He is shaken in his belief towards this when he realizes that Yuri can never be legally convicted for his crimes due to his connections to powerful entities like the President using him as a go-between for global arms trading.]]

* SenselessSacrifice: When [[spoiler: Vitaly]] realizes that the guns Yuri is about to sell will shortly be used to massacre a settlement of unarmed refugees, he attempts to sabotage the sale by destroying the weapons, very likely knowing that he will be killed for doing so. Unfortunately, he is killed before he can destroy both truckloads of weapons, so the sale goes through anyway and the remaining weapons are used to carry out the slaughter.

** Many of the gangsters, drug kingpins, and warlords that Yuri does business with do not try for a BallisticDiscount because Yuri is a valuable supplier and killing him would not only eliminate the opportunity for return business, but serve as a giant red flag to other potential arms dealers that this particular client cannot be trusted. For instance, the warlord in Sierra Leone doesn't kill Yuri even after [[spoiler:Vitali kills one of his allies and]] destroys half the weapons that Yuri brought him. He just swipes away half of Yuri's payment since he's still entitled to the other half.

* PragmaticVillainy: When Yuri says that he used to sell weapons to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan who were fighting against the Soviet invasion, he takes a moment to note that he never sold weapons to Osama Bin Laden, who was involved in that conflict. However, the reason why Yuri didn't sell to Bin Laden has nothing to do with morals.