Lord Of War (2005) Movie Script
There are over 550 million firearms
in world-wide circulation.
That's one firearm for every
twelve people on the planet.
The only question is...
how do we arm the other eleven?
You don't have to worry.
I'm not gonna tell you a pack of
lies to make me look good.
I'm just gonna tell you
what happened.
My name is Yuri Orlov.
When I was a boy,
my family came to America.
But not all the way.
Like most Ukrainians,
we gathered in Brighton Beach.
It reminded us of the Black Sea.
I soon realized we'd just swapped
one hell for another.
Even in hell, an angel
sometimes makes an appearance.
I'd worshipped Ava Fontaine
since I was 10 years old.
Of course, she didn't know I existed.
I was starting to think she had a point.
For the first twenty-odd years of my life...
...Little Odessa was to me what it
is to the Q train...
...the end of the line.
"Little Odessa," New York - 1982
Oh, I did lie about my name.
It's not really Yuri Orlov.
There've been few occasions
in the in the 20th century...
when it's been an advantage be a Jew.
But in the 'seventies,
to escape the Soviet Union,
our family pretended to be Jewish.
Little about my life has been
kosher ever since
How's it going, brother?
It's not.
That's Vitaly, my younger brother.
He was as lost as me.
He didn't know it yet.
Yuri,
you're late.
My father took his assumed
identity to heart.
He was more Jewish than most Jews.
Which drove my Catholic mother crazy.
How many times?
I can't eat shellfish.
It's treyf.
You're not Jewish.
I like it.
I like the hat.
To remind us there is something...
above us.
I like that.
I'm going to temple.
You're not going to temple.
You go to temple more than the rabbi.
Get off my back, woman.
God, will you ever wise up?
Yuri, don't forget to check
the specials at the Palace.
Growing up in Little Odessa,
murder was everyday part of life.
Russian mobsters had also
migrated
from the Soviet Union
and when they came to America,
their baggage came with them.
There was always some gangster
getting whacked in my
neighborhood,
but I'd never seen it with my own eyes.
I had this knack of showing up
five minutes before something went down,
or five minutes after.
Not that day.
It hit me.
It couldn't have hit me harder
if I was the one who'd been shot.
You go into the restaurant business...
because people are always going
to have to eat.
That was the day I realized my destiny...
...lay in fulfilling another basic
human need.
The next Sabbath,
I went to temple with my father.
However, it wasn't God
I was trying to get close to.
Eli, my eldest son, Yuri.
My contact at synagogue landed me
my first Israeli-made Uzi
submachine guns.
The first time you sell a gun...
is a lot like the first time you have sex.
You have absolutely no idea
what you're doing.
But it is exciting and one way
or another,
it's over way too fast.
Gentlemen.
The new Uzi machine pistol.
Big firepower in a small package.
This little baby uses 9 mm hollow points.
Twenty twenty-five round extendable mags...
...rear-flip adjustable sights.
Silencer comes standard.
Excellent recoil reduction.
Muzzle jump reduced forty percent.
Sixty percent improved noise
suppression.
You could pump a mag into me
right now
and never wake the guy
in the next room.
Of course, that would eliminate your
opportunity for repeat business.
I did have a natural instinct
for smuggling contraband.
Fortunately, back then a video camera
was a big as a bazooka
Here I'd been running away from violence
my whole life, and I should've
run towards it.
It's in our nature.
The earliest human skeletons had
spearheads in their rib cages.
Where have you been?
What if we had a customer?
God bless America.
Beware of the dog?
You don't have a dog.
Are you trying to scare people?
No, it's to scare me.
Remind me to be aware of the dog in me.
The dog wants to fuck everything
that moves
Wants to fight and kill weaker dogs.
I guess it's to remind me to be
more human.
Isn't being a dog part of being human?
What if that's the best part of you?
The dog part.
What if you're really just a
two-legged dog?
You need to see somebody.
Stinks in here.
I'd always wanted to do something
big with my life
I just didn't know what.
Anyhow, I figured,
if I was going into the gun trade,
I was going aim high.
Vitaly, stop fucking around.
I want to talk to you.
You read the newspapers, Vit?
Newspaper? It's always the same.
You're right.
Every day there's people shooting
each other.
You know what I do when I see that?
I look to see what guns they're using
and I think to myself, why not my guns?
What, are you opening a gun shop?
Already more of those in than
McDonald's.
Even with all the gangsters around here,
the margins are too low.
You've figured the margins?
Sure.
Forget gang wars.
The real money is in actual wars.
Between countries.
Yuri, what the fuck do you know
about guns?
I know which end I'd rather be on.
I made the first sale.
We're already in business.
Whoa, whoa. We?
I need a partner.
I don't know,
I don't know, Yuri. I don't know.
Vitaly, I've tasted your borscht.
You're no fucking chef.
I can eat in the restaurant for free
and I still don't eat there.
Fuck you.
We're doing nothing with our lives.
I mean, this is shit!
This is shit!
It's true.
But maybe doing nothing's
better than doing this.
I need you.
Brothers in arms.
Brothers in arms.
Sir, may I interest you in the
shoulder-fired SA-7
surface-to-air missiles?
The older Chinese model.
Not so effective against
modern military aircraft. But deadly...
if used against a commercial airliner.
I'm giving them away at 8-50.
In the '80s, and the Cold War was
far from thawed
Most of the deals were
government-to-government.
It was a mostly private club...
...with a lifetime club president.
That's him.
The big shot?
Simeon Weisz, Angola,
Mozambique,
those Exocet missiles
in the Falklands.
He was selling guns before
there was gunpowder.
Be right back.
Mr. Weisz? Mr. Weisz!
It's okay, they're talking.
May I help?
A mutual friend, Eli Kurtzman
from Brighton Beach,
import/export said to contact you.
I have a business proposal
and I thought perhaps we could
discuss it.
I don't think you and I are
in the same business.
You think I just sell guns,
don't you?
I don't. I take sides.
But in the Iran-Iraq war
you sold guns to both sides.
Did you ever consider that
I wanted both sides to lose?
Bullets change governments far
surer than votes.
You're in the wrong place,
my young friend.
This is no place for amateurs.
Motherfucker.
Curious how you always revert to
your native tongue
in moments of extreme anger.
And ecstasy.
Oh God... Oh, God!
You are beautiful.
What's your name again?
The only option for Vitaly and me
was under-the-counter gunrunning.
Beirut, Lebanon - 1984
I got my first break in Lebanon
after the suicide bombing.
But I wasn't the only local kid
making good.
When the United States leaves a war zone...
they generally don't take
their munitions.
It costs more to bring it back
than to buy new stock.
So, we sell by the kilo.
They're secondhand weapons,
but they're still okay.
How many kilos would you like?
Five thousand.
I had a flair for languages...
...but I soon discovered that what
talks best is dollars, dinars...
...drachmas, rubles, rupees, and
pounds-fucking-sterling.
Of course, the U.S. Army got a
piece of the action.
Army salaries were no better then
than they are today.
And some of the brass,
like Lieutenant Colonel Southern...
needed to raise money for their
own private wars.
Good to make your acquaintance.
This is bullshit money,
This is small-fucking-potatoes.
What do you want to do, go more legit?
No, more illegal.
What I would give right now
for cabbage and potatoes.
It's not our fight.
Vit, come on!
Let's go. Come on.
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 every army but the
Salvation Army.
I sold Israeli-made Uzis to Muslims.
I sold communist-made bullets
to fascists.
I hope you're not thinking of
selling these, Mr. Orlov.
Personal use.
Personal use.
There's a hundred thousand
bullets here.
I'm kind of trigger happy.
Trigger happy?
I even shipped cargo to Afghanistan
when they were still fighting my
fellow Soviets.
I never sold to Osama Bin Laden.
Not on any moral grounds.
Back then, he was always
bouncing checks.
By the mid-'80s...
my weapons were represented in eight...
...of the world's top ten war zones.
There's no problem leading a double life.
It's the triple and quadruple lives
that get you in the end.
Back then, I carried a... French,
British, Israeli,
and Ukrainian passport...
...and a student visa for the U.S.,
but... that's another story.
I also packed six different briefcases...
...depending on who I was that day
and the region of the world I was visiting.
North of Cartagena, Colombia - 1989
Without operations like mine,
would be impossible for certain
countries
to conduct a respectable war.
I was able to navigate around those
inconvenient little arms embargoes.
There are three basic types
of arms deal.
White, being legal.
Black, being illegal,
and my personal favorite color, gray.
Sometimes I made the deal
so convoluted...
it was hard for me to work out
if they were on the level.
To keep authorities in the dark
I often spoke in code.
Rocket launchers were "mothers."
The rockets, "children."
The AK-47 assault rifle was
the "Angel King."
It's Yuri... Yeah. Well, Raoul...
Raoul, the Angel King will arrive tomorrow.
Hallelujah to you, too.
The point is, if I've done my job right
an arms embargo should be
practically impossible to enforce.
What?
Okay, just slow the fuck down.
I can't understand you.
Wha-What do you mean, tipped off?
They know where we are?
Well, where are they?
Well, how long have I got?
Not long?
What does that mean? Shit!
Do we try to lose them?
On this?
Yuri, we have to get off this thing.
No. No one's going anywhere.
Slow, dead slow. Buy me time.
Yeah, it's Yuri.
Get that fucking rag down!
I need another handle for this tub.
Something in our weight class.
You! Over the side.
We're changing the name. Now!
Yes, it's got to check out.
The way I look at it,
what's in a name?
Have you got a shorter name?
I'd often changed the registration
of a ship or a plane...
...but never on such short notice.
Damn! They're hauling.
What? Kono? How do you spell
that?
K-O-N-O, okay, well, that's good.
Kono, K-O-N-O.
What are we flying? Dutch? Got it.
Vit, get me a Dutch flag, will you?
Faster! Or I'll send your ass in!
Yuri, I don't have Dutch!
What?
I've got Belgian.
What the fuck use is that?
He's painting a name registered
in the fucking Netherlands.
I've got a French flag.
So?
Turn it sideways...
...it's Dutch.
That's why you're my brother.
All right, good!
Everybody look innocent now.
They say every man has his price.
But not every man gets it.
Interpol Agent Jack Valentine
couldn't be bought.
At least, not with money.
For Jack, glory was the prize.
Yeah, it's the Kono;
it's not the Kristol.
Kono, K-O-N-O.
It's clean, sir.
It's clean?
It sure doesn't look clean.
I'm going to go aboard.
Phone in a sighting of the
Kristol south of Aruba.
Even when I was up against an
overzealous agent...
...I had a number of methods for
discouraging a search.
I routinely mislabeled my arms shipments
"Farm Machinery."
And I have yet to meet the lowly
paid customs official...
...who will open a container...
...marked "Radioactive Waste"
to verify its contents.
But my personal favorite is
the unique combination...
of week-old potatoes and tropical heat.
Smells.
Sir, Sighting of the Kristol, due north.
Most importantly, I kept a number
of intelligence people
on the payroll to supply their colleagues
with counterintelligence.
Let's go.
The second rule of gunrunning is:
Always ensure you have a
foolproof way to get paid.
Preferably in advance...
ideally to an off-shore account.
That's why I chose my customers
so carefully.
Say what you like about warlords
and dictators...
they tend to have a highly
developed sense of order.
They always pay their bills on time.
What is this?
Six kilos of pure.
I can't hand this to my fucking bank
teller at Chase Manhattan.
Listen, asshole, you should be
thanking me.
Have you checked the street price today?
With the seizures at the border last week,
it's jumped thirty percent.
Whoa... whoa-whoa!
I sell guns. I don't sell drugs.
Diversify.
I've got standards.
You don't pay, you don't play.
Fuck you!
What are you doing?
Fuck you!
Fuck you!
No, you don't fuck him.
We can work something out.
No, Vit!
We have a deal!
The first and most important
rule of gunrunning...
is never get shot with your own
merchandise.
Are you okay?
I think so.
So what do we do now?
Let's celebrate.
That narco guerilla had his facts right.
After shipping it stateside,
the return on that blow
netted me a healthy profit.
It would have been even better,
except one kilo never made it back.
Vitaly?
Vit!
To this day I don't know what Vitaly...
...was running away from.
Maybe just from Vitaly.
I found him twelve days,
two thousand miles,
and one hundred and fifty grams later
in a Bolivian boarding house.
Of course, my dream girl
had gone there before me.
Vit!
Come on!
Fuck, Yuri's back.
It's my brother, Yuri.
He's my big brother.
What the fuck is that?
Ukraine.
I was young, but I remember.
Look... I start in Odessa, right?
And then I work my way to the
Crimean
You'll be dead before you fucking
reach Kiev!
We're going home. Come on,
You fuck! You fucking fuck!
You fucking fuck...
What the fuck is your problem?
Come on, Vit.
J.F.K. Airport, New York - 1989
Yuri, it's so nice to be home.
Yeah, good work.
We're gonna get you home.
Come on.
St. Francis Rehabilitation Center
Get out of the car.
Vitaly, I need you to get out of the car.
I promised our parents.
Please.
Vitaly, you're going to have a great time.
This is a top place.
Two Ford models checked in last week.
And that cute weather girl's been
here since July.
Please.
Please, Yuri.
You're a good brother.
You're a good brother, Yuri.
Okay. All right.
Good brother.
All right. Get out of the car.
Okay
Get out of the car.
From then on I was a one-man operation.
I never understood what separated...
the recreational drug user from
the habitual.
But for the grace of God...
it could've been me snorting lines
as long as the Belt Parkway.
However, I wasn't entirely free
of the grip of addiction myself.
There she was again.
Ava Fontaine.
In my neighborhood they say,
"The good get out."
In our own ways, we'd both
conquered the world.
St. Barts, French Caribbean - 1989
You can't force somebody to
fall in love with you.
But you can definitely improve your odds.
It cost me 20 grand to book he
for a fake photo shoot.
Another twelve to buy out the hotel.
Popular hotel, huh?
Ava Fontaine.
Yuri Orlov.
What brings you to St. Barts?
Photo shoot.
At least, that was the plan.
I guess the photographer got
stuck in Miami.
Hurricane. Though there's nothing
on the news.
Those things can come out of nowhere.
So... the job's been cancelled,
and wouldn't you know it,
there's no flight to New York until Tuesday.
You can hitch a ride with me if you like.
I'm leaving tomorrow.
Meanwhile, why don't I take your picture?
In my experience,
some of the most successful
relationships...
are based on lies and deceit.
Since that's where they usually
end up anyway...
it's a logical place to start.
Right there. Hold it there.
Oh, my God!
I nearly went broke trying to
convince her I was anything but.
I knew Ava was not the kind of woman
to be seduced by a ride in a private jet
unless you owned the jet.
This is your plane?
That is my name.
Of course, I was lying.
The plane was rented, like the car
and even the suit I was standing in
At the last minute,
I'd bribed the crew for the paint job.
Luckily, by the time we landed...
Ava wasn't looking anywhere
but in my eyes.
I had no idea.
I'm sorry I didn't recognize you.
Don't apologize. I put clothes on
for a living.
A least you're not taking them off.
I would be, if half the...
...photographers had their way.
What about you?
I'm in transport.
International air freight, mostly.
Business is good.
Where're you from?
I was born in Ukraine,
but I grew up in Brooklyn.
No.
What, you too?
Williamsburg.
Here's to a hurricane.
Without it, I never would have met you.
This is no accident, is it, Yuri?
It feels like fate.
I don't believe in fate.
What do you believe in?
Is that a view, or is that a view?
That's a view.
Thank you. Thank you all.
Congratulations.
Congratulations.
Thanks.
Always remember, son...
There is something above you.
Sure, Dad.
A forty-thousand-dollar crystal chandelier.
Make yourselves at home. Go!
Go!
I'm sorry. Today must be tough.
It'd be nice to have a couple
more guests
from my side of the family.
I'm sure they're watching right now.
Thank you.
But you don't believe that, Yuri...
...remember?
I know you, Yuri.
I know you're not everything you seem.
Don't worry, I won't ask a lot of questions.
I don't want to hear you lie.
You take risks.
Just promise me you won't risk us.
That's the trouble with falling in love
with a dream girl.
They have a habit of becoming real.
I've never been so glad to see Vitaly.
You're fucking beautiful!
Brother...
Brother, thank you so much...
for giving me such a beautiful sister.
He was out of rehab, and out of his mind.
Dance! Dance! We have to dance!
All right, all right
It's a wedding, a celebration
To Yuri!
For once, he rescued me.
New York - December 25, 1991
I was still living way beyond my means.
Mortgaged to the hilt, using one
credit card to pay another.
Anything to keep Ava in the style to
which she had thanks largely to me
become accustomed.
Ava
Ava, this is too much.
Yuri likes to spoil you.
Then suddenly,
all my Christmases came at once.
Nicki, you did it! Good boy!
That's my grandson!
Yuri, don't you want to see what
your son is doing?
Whoever said it's better to give
than receive...
...never got a Christmas present
like the one I got...
in 1991 from Mikhail Gorbachev.
What the hell's the matter?
It's over!
What's over?
The Cold-fucking-War!
The Soviet-fucking Union
The Evil fucking-Empire!
Mikhail's saying no mas.
He's throwing in the towel.
It's over!
Your son is walking.
That's incredible, honey.
At least they'll get religious freedom.
Let's hope so.
I think I'll go back for a visit.
Do you stay in touch with Uncle Dmitri?
I'm not a fool, Yuri.
I don't think you're going to
Odessa to sell Pepsi-Cola.
Is this how you want to be remembered?
I don't want to be remembered at all.
I'm being remembered,
it means I'm dead.
Merry-fucking-Christmas!
Who is this, Vitaly?
I'm Angel.
Her name really is Angel.
She's a fairy.
Let's put her on top of the
Christmas tree.
Come on
I love you.
Come on.
I love you all.
Take this.
I'm going back to Ukraine.
I miss Odessa.
I miss you.
I miss you.
Be careful, Yuri. Those things
you sell kill.
Inside.
You're high.
That's true.
Hello, Christian.
Odessa, Ukraine - 1992
During the Cold War, the Red
Army stationed nearly
one million troops in Ukraine...
because of its strategic military importance.
The day after The Wall came down...
the paychecks stopped coming.
Your papers.
There's nothing better for an arms dealer...
combination of disgruntled soldiers
and warehouses full of weapons.
Welcome.
I was hoping Major General Dmitri Volkoff
would open a lot of armory doors
in a lot of military bases.
For a start, he was family.
He was a highly decorated hero
of the Red Army,
and he was almost permanently
shit-faced
I can't just sell you government
property, Yuri.
I have to report.
Report to who? Moscow?
As of last week
Moscow's in a foreign country.
New flag, new boss.
There is no new boss yet.
They're all too busy squabbling over
who's gonna get the presidential
holiday home
at the Black Sea.
It's beautiful.
The ones who know don't care any more
and the ones who care don't know.
Show me your inventory.
Those 45 years of mutual hatred
between the East and the West...
had generated the highest weapons
buildup in history.
The Soviets had guns
coming out of the demon hole.
Huge stockpiles, and now no enemy.
How many Kalashnikovs do you have?
Forty thousand.
Is that a four?
It doesn't look like a four to me.
It's more like a one.
No, it's a four.
It's whatever we say it is.
Because no one else will know
the difference?
Ten thousand Kalashnikovs for
a Your stocks are battalion.
Your stocks are dangerously
depleted, Dmitri.
You should order more from the factory.
Someone will work it out.
What happens then?
We'll cut them in.
The end of the Cold War
was the beginning of the hottest
time in arms dealing.
The arms bazaar was open.
Guided missiles, unguided missiles.
Mortars, mines,
armored personnel carriers.
Whole tank divisions.
I'll tell you what I'll do.
Buy six, you get one free.
I even landed a squadron of
helicopter gunships.
The most sophisticated fighting
machines...
built for a war with America that
never happened.
Son, get off there before you get hurt.
I can take it apart with my eyes closed.
Thanks to me,
they'd finally get to fire a shot in anger.
I have a feeling it wasn't exactly
what Comrade Lenin had in mind
when he advocated the
redistribution of wealth.
But I wasn't the only one
offering a crash course in capitalism.
I had rivals.
Inform your commanding officer
that Simeon Weisz is here to meet him.
You don't know who I am, do you?
I don't give a fuck who you are.
You're late.
So it appears.
Thank you.
My pleasure.
You sell guns?
Maybe you'd like to come to my room
and I'll show you my... cannon.
You look a little lost, Simeon.
Is the world changing too fast?
I'm here, aren't I?
Not all of you, I think.
You've gotten so rich selling for the CIA
you can't seem to get that ideology
completely out of your head.
Oh, the Cold War had its uses.
Kept the tensions frozen.
Now it's harder to determine
which side one's on.
Things have become more complicated.
No, it's gotten simpler.
There's no place in gunrunning
for politics anymore,
I sell to leftists and rightists.
I sell to pacifists,
but they're not the most regular of
customers.
Of course, you're not a true
internationalist...
...until you've supplied weapons
to kill your own countrymen.
This current state of chaos won't
last forever.
There'll have to be order.
Instead of cutting each other's throats,
it may be beneficial if we work together.
What do you think?
What do I think?
I think you are the amateur now,
and I think you should go with
your instincts.
With your first instinct.
I'm the same man who was not
good enough for you before...
and I'm just not good enough
for you now.
The problem with gunrunners
going to war
is that there's no shortage of ammunition.
This was the chaos
that the Old Guard had always feared.
As far as they were concerned,
I was giving arms dealers a bad name.
But they could hardly report me
to the Better Business Bureau.
And Ukraine wasn't the only former state...
with an unpaid army and stockpiles of guns.
There was Bulgaria, Hungary,
Poland, Belarus...
all there for the taking.
Of all the weapons in the vast
Soviet arsenal...
nothing was more profitable than
Avtomat Kalashnikova,
model of 1947,
more commonly known as the
AK-47... or kalashnikov.
It's the world's most popular
assault rifle
a weapon all fighters love.
An elegantly simple nine-pound
amalgamation of forged steel
and plywood.
It doesn't break, jam, or overheat.
It will shoot whether it's covered in mud
or filled with sand.
It's so easy, even a child can use it
and they do.
The Soviets put the gun on a coin.
Mozambique put it on their flag.
Since the end of the Cold War,
the Kalashnikov has become the...
...Russian people's greatest export.
After that comes vodka, caviar,
and suicidal novelists.
One thing's for sure
no one was lining up to buy their cars.
What fucking documents?
You listen to me, Lieutenant.
You keep them there.
For as long as you can!
Fight You listen to me, Lieutenant.
To the death! Moscow is behind us!
It's an order!
I thought you supposed watching
out for these people.
How can I?
You keep selling my helicopters.
You are too greedy, Yuri!
I can't hold him forever.
I've got paperwork.
Not for the gunships.
You know the penalty for
sanction-busting.
Selling the military helicopter
is a major violation.
Military helicopter.
It's not a military helicopter.
It's a rescue helicopter.
Get to work, son.
No problem.
The law's on our side.
All right, let me see your papers.
No-no-no, put that away.
See your papers.
Yuri Orlov.
Mr. Orlov, always In the wrong
place at the right time.
What the fuck is this?
We've met before.
Off the coast Colombia.
What was the name of that freighter?
I can't remember, was it the Kono
or the Kristol?
The crew called that vessel a lot of names.
None repeatable in polite company.
Answer the question.
The new MP-5.
Would you like a silencer for that?
I need to see your papers.
Get the fuck off me.
Dmitri!
The end-user certificate for this aircraft...
states "Burkina Faso."
Nice, very nice.
Did you type this up yourself?
The helicopter is to be used on
humanitarian missions.
Oh, so you're a humanitarian?
Oh, absolutely.
This is a military aircraft.
Not anymore.
Listen to the nephew!
What can they do with military hardware
but convert it to civilian use?
The only way you could die from this baby
now is if a food drop hits you.
And this stuff over here, huh?
Is it going to Burkina Faso... Ah,
but to a different client at a
different address.
That's just a coincidence is that it?
Do you take me for a complete
fucking fool?
Not complete, sir.
And while I hesitate to tell your job.
I must point out that
when shipped separately,
the weapons and the aircraft
both comply with current Interpol
trade standards and practices.
We both know, that is an obscene
bureaucratic loophole that's gonna
be closed
any goddamn day.
But it's not closed.
And while certain people might interpret
this cargo as suspicious,
thank God we live in a world,
where suspicion alone
does not constitute a crime.
And men like you
respect the rule of law.
I was as guilty as sin,
but Valentine couldn't prove it.
And he was the rarest breed of
law enforcement officer,
the type who knew I was breaking the law,
but wouldn't break it himself to bust me.
TWO DAYS LATER
Valentine wasn't the only one trying to
put me out of business.
My uncle had turned down a half
dozen rival arms dealers,
sometimes with offers better than mine.
But to Dmitri, you couldn't put
a price on loyalty.
What was he doing here?
He is hoping to beat your offer.
I told him to go have intercourse
with himself.
But Yuri
You need to make more payoffs.
Too many know.
Don't worry.
There are more VCRs and cigarettes.
I left them in your new car.
Even your enemy was admiring that car.
I'm the luckiest man alive.
You are.
Hello.
Ava?
Hi, baby.
You forgot what time it is?
Sorry, I...
How was that your audition?
They're going in another direction.
Direction with someone who can act.
They don't deserve you.
Where are you?
Is everything okay?
It was a rough day at the office.
Come home.
Soon. How's Nicki?
He misses you. We both do.
It's lonely without you here.
You know I don't like nights.
Ever since my parents...
Yuri, what's that?
A party.
I'd better go.
Just wanted to call and hear your voice.
Kiss Nicki for me.
I love you.
The pillaging didn't die with my uncle.
After The Wall came down
$32 billion billion dollars worth of arms
were stolen and resold from
Ukraine alone,
one of the greatest heists of the
Monrovia, Liberia - 1995
The primary market was Africa.
Eleven major conflicts involving
thirty-two countries in less than a decade...
A gunrunner's wet dream.
At the time, the West couldn't care less.
They had a white war in what was
left of Yugoslavia.
I did the bulk of my business in Liberia...
"Land of the Free." Originally
established as a homeland for
freed American slaves,
it's been enslaved by one dictator
or another ever since.
The latest was American-educated,
self declared president, Andre Baptiste.
Mr. Yuri!
I'm Andre Baptiste, Junior.
My father would like to meet you.
What an honor.
Thank him.
But unfortunately I have other business.
It's a shame, it's a very busy schedule.
It is not, as they say, optional.
My father is easily offended.
My schedule just freed up.
President Baptiste was my best customer
but I was in no hurry to meet him.
He'd gotten a reputation for
routinely hacking off the
limbs of those who opposed him.
His seven-year civil war has been
described...
as "a relentless campaign of
sadistic wanton violence."
That kind of sums up Andy for me.
The Glock is interesting.
It's made of a polymer composite.
Many of my clients feel they can
get through airport security
without setting off a lot of bells
and whistles.
Personally I do not recommend that.
On the other hand,
if you are looking for a traditional
wheel gun,
there is no substitute for the six inches
of muzzle energy of a.357 magnum.
And of course, it will never jam.
Why did you do that?
What did you say?
Now you'll have to buy it.
It's a used gun.
How can I sell a used gun?
A used gun.
A used gun.
That's a good one.
You know there is no discipline
with the youth today.
I try to set an example but it is
difficult, eh?
Personally, I blame MTV.
A used gun.
I think you and I, we can do business.
If I thought I was scared of
Andre Senior,
I knew I was scared of Andre Junior.
Like father, like son.
The guava doesn't fall too far
from the tree.
He was also a cannibal.
They say Andre would eat a victim's heart
while it was still beating
to give him superhuman strength.
Monrovia itself was like being on
another planet.
Planet Monrovia.
From the temperature,
it was obviously a planet close to
the sun.
I rarely saw another white man,
and I never left town alone.
Outside town was the edge of hell.
I didn't want to even gaze into it.
This is your hotel. Two stars.
Can you bring me the gun of Rambo?
Part one, two, or three?
I've only seen part one.
The M-60.
Would you like the armor-piercing
bullets?
Please.
My father left a welcoming
present in your room.
Enjoy.
My God, she nearly got her head cut off.
When I get to America,
I will not live in Brentwood.
Second floor.
In the most AIDS-infested region
of the globe...
where one in four is infected...
Andre's idea of a joke was to put
a young Iman and a young Naomi
in my bed.
And no condom within 100 miles.
Hello, Mr. Yuri.
Hi.
We'd be happy to make you happy.
Uh, I can't. I'd love to.
But I can't.
Don't worry.
We don't have anything.
How do you know?
Do we look like it?
What if I have AIDS?
Don't you worry?
You worry too much.
Why do you worry about
something that
can kill you in ten years
when there are so many things
that can kill you today?
Now...
...how can we make you happy?
By leaving.
These are my Kalashnikov Kids.
My Boy Brigades.
I can see what you are thinking,
but we need every man we can get.
Even if they're not men?
A bullet from a fourteen-year-old...
...is just as effective as one from
a forty-year-old.
Often more effective.
No one can stop this bath of blood.
It's not "bath of blood."
It's "bloodbath."
Thank you.
But I prefer it my way.
I am not going to pay your asking price.
We are not a rich people.
And besides,
the market is already flooded with
your Kalashnikovs.
Do you realize in some parts of
my country
you can get one for the price of a chicken?
But you can't just consider unit price.
You forget ancillary costs.
End-user certificates need to be
forged and notarized,
Shell companies set up,
insurance purchased,
pilots and crews hired.
Not to mention bribes.
You can't get a nut and bolt out
of the Eastern Bloc without a bribe.
There's one bribe for the nut,
another for the bolt.
Andy... Andy, listen to me.
This is an expensive proposition.
"Andy"?
I am going to pay you in timber or stones.
I'll take the stones.
It's kind of hard to get a tree trunk
into my hand luggage.
I know you're planning a new offensive.
If you can delay a week,
I can get you armored personnel carriers.
They'd greatly reduce your casualties...
...and give you a significant
strategic advantage.
You know, they call me
the Lord Of War.
But perhaps it is you.
It's not "Lord Of War," it's "Warlord."
Thank you, but I prefer it my way.
Conflict diamonds are a common
currency in West Africa,
also referred to as "blood diamonds"
since bloodshed is what they
generally finance.
By the late '90s, my wealth had caught up
to my lies about my wealth.
Even surpassed my lies.
I could even afford to become a
patron of the arts.
It's just that I can't believe it.
Well, of... of course, it's wonderful.
I just...
I didn't expect it to happen so soon.
Yes. Well, that wou-that would be
great, too yeah.
It's wonderful. Thank you so much.
It's... Yuri. Okay, thank you. Bye.
Yuri, that was the dealer on the phone.
I just sold my first painting.
Aah! That's fantastic.
Uh, who bought it?
It's someone important.
They want to remain anonymous.
This is so wonderful!
How was your trip?
You know, same old, same old.
Where's Nicki?
Oh, in bed, I'm sorry.
He couldn't stay up.
That's best.
My first painting!
I'm officially an artist!
This calls for a drink.
What doesn't?
Hi.
Yuri, this is uh...
Candy.
Candy. Of course.
Any friend of my brother's is a...
friend of my brother's.
You have a beautiful... everything.
Yes, he does.
Yes, I do.
I'm going to kiss Nicki goodnight.
Okay.
How are you, brother?
Well, you know,
still the resident family fuckup.
Yeah. Well, I guess someone has
to do it.
Well.
Hey, Ava knows, right?
I never want to say anything,
She doesn't have to know.
She understands.
She's a survivor, like me.
She may be a survivor,
but she's not like you.
Really She doesn't know
how you pay for all this
We don't talk about it.
How many car salesman talk
about their work? Huh?
How many cigarette salesmen?
Both their products kill more people
every year than mine.
At least mine has a safety switch.
If those guys can leave their work
at the office,
so can I.
God damn, you are good!
You really are.
You almost had me convinced.
Could you...
could you help me out with...
Why?
Why?
Why?
Why what?
Why?
Why?
I don't know.
Why...
I don't know.
Why what?
Why're you so fucked up all the time?
Because I am. I don't know.
I didn't know how much Ava
really knew...
and how much she ignored.
She never questioned how a guy
in the transport business...
could afford to give her 18 carat
diamond earrings.
I guess she didn't want to hear the answer.
Mostly, She seemed content
that I was a good provider...
and as far as she was concerned, loyal.
Despite the other women...
I always made love to Ava
as if she was the only one.
I'm not saying I didn't have setbacks.
It's not called gunrunning for nothing.
You gotta be fast on your feet.
Some revolutions blow over
the guns even get there.
There's nothing's more expensive
for an arms dealer than peace.
Truce? What do you mean, truce?
The guns are already on their way.
Peace talks.
All right, forget it.
I'll re-route the shipment to the Balkans.
When they talk about war,
they keep their word.
Of course, a new breed of gunrunner
requires a new breed of cop.
Henry, take Park Avenue.
Take 'em on a tour of New Jersey.
Yuri, there are men going through
our garbage cans.
Well, it's probably just some reporters
looking for somebody else.
I have a feeling they don't work
for the tabloids.
Yuri...
is there anything I should be
worried about?
No, nothing.
Nothing?
I love you.
I love you, too.
Sir.
I was now the best merchant
of death alive.
I didn't own my own plane,
I owned a fleet.
Running guns into Liberia,
Sierra Leone,
or the Ivory Coast at least once a week.
Most trips I had phony paperwork.
The deadline was tight
and I had to cut corners,
I had no paperwork at all.
But I wasn't overly concerned.
There was hardly any radar over
most of Africa
and even fewer people to watch it.
Charlie Echo India,
...re-route to Kabala airport...
...on heading zero-two nine.
Comply immediately.
Yuri, what the fuck is going on?
Hello, Southern? It's Yuri.
I Sorry to call you on this number.
But I've got Interpol's all over my ass.
I can't know you right now.
It's uh, not a good time.
Not a good time?
Motherfucker!
Charlie, Echo, India,
comply immediately.
This is your last warning.
Where was the first fucking warning?
Rock your wings
if you intend to comply
I'm putting us down.
If you land, we're going away.
I don't have paperwork.
We're in a flying fucking bomb!
They're firing bullets at our bullets.
I'm putting us down.
Okay, okay. Fuck!
This is Charlie, Echo, India.
Request re-route to Kabala airport,
bearing zero-two-nine.
No, not the airport. There the highway.
It's our only hope.
Are you fucking mad?
A pothole will set us off.
You underestimate yourself, Alexei.
You're the best.
You're the shit, Alexei, you're the shit!
You're the shit! You're the shit!
Of course Alexei wasn't the best.
He'd come forty-second out of
forty three
at the Moscow Flight School.
Oh, God, what's he doing?
Is this guy nuts?
I can't land there, sir.
Kabala's fifteen minutes away.
He can't get far.
I want a truck on the tarmac.
We gonna be okay.
Where are you going?
As far from the evidence as we can get.
Wait, there's not going to be any evidence!
Come here. Come here.
Hey, don't be shy. Here, look.
Free sample
help yourself, okay? Free sample.
Tell your friend.
Gun for you.
Happy times. Come on.
Help yourselves. No charge.
Everything goes.
Guns, guns, guns, yes,
come on up!
Here! You're having fun now, huh?
Come on! Guns, guns, guns! Yes!
Bullets, guns, grenades!
Take 'em all.
Take the whole crate. Go ahead.
Gun, grenades, hooray!
Bullets! Guns! Grenades!
Yeah.
That one's got your name on it.
You want one, too? Come on.
Don't forget the bullets.
Don't forget the bullets.
How can you shoot a gun
if you don't have bullets?
Everything goes for free!
Guns, grenades! All you see. Bullets,
guns, grenades.
Hooray, hooray!
Have the bullets.
What a cargo crew at Heathrow Airport
does in a day took a bunch of
malnourished Sierra Leonean
locals ten minutes.
By the time Agent Valentine got there,
you could find more guns on
a plane full of Quakers.
Yuri Orlov.
Ow! Fuck!
You run from us?
No, Mbizi. No!
Can you run with no legs?
Let me make him disappear,
Mr. Valentine
Around here, people disappear all the time.
I can't do that.
Look where we are. Who will know?
We will.
He's gonna get what's coming to him.
I'm not as certain.
All right, get up.
What's the charge?
What are you doing in Sierra Leone...
I'm on safari.
Yeah? You're hunting wildebeests
with a submachine gun?
Do you also work with the
Park Service?
Hunting without a license,
is that the charge?
Why are we playing games?
You traffic arms.
Trade.
Trade.
Traffic.
You get rich by giving the
poorest people on the planet
the means to continue killing each other.
Do you know why I do what I do?
I mean, there are more
prestigious assignments.
Keeping track of nuclear arsenals,
You'd think that's more critical to
world security,
but it's not.
No, nine out of ten war victims today
are killed with assault rifles and
small like yours.
Those nuclear missiles?
They sit in their silos. Your AK-47?
That is the real weapon of mass
destruction.
I don't want people dead, Agent Valentine.
I don't put a gun to anybody's head
and make them shoot.
I admit, but shooting war is better
for business,
but I prefer people to
fire my guns and miss.
Just as long as they're firing.
Can I go now?
You've got nothing on me.
Except cuffs.
Since you're so concerned with the law,
you must know that I'm legally
permitted to hold you for
twenty- four hours
without charging you.
You might ask why I would do
that and I can assure you.
It's not because I enjoy your
company,
because I don't.
No, the reason why
I'll delay you for every second
of the permissible twenty-four hours
Is I'm delaying your deadly trade
and the deaths of your victims.
I don't think of it as taking a day from you...
...but giving a day to them.
Some innocent man, woman, or child
is going to have an extra day
on this earth because you're not free.
So, I will see you in twenty-three hours
and fifty-five minutes, hm?
Valentine knew he didn't have to guard me.
There was nowhere to go.
Or maybe he was hoping the locals
would tear me apart.
But they were too busy with the plane.
It's like parking your car
in certain neighborhoods in the Bronx.
You just don't do it.
The way I looked at it
it's the way of Africa, maybe life.
Everything that comes from the earth
eventually returns.
Even a 40-ton Atonov-12 cargo plane.
A gift. For you.
You know, you've arrived just in time.
I was afraid that he might die
before you got your chance to kill him.
This man came here hoping to
take your place.
Is that not so?
No, I'm not here to supply
Mr. Baptiste.
I am here to supply his enemies.
I fear it's a sale I shall never complete.
He killed your blood... Your uncle...
when he tried to kill you.
No.
No?
You want that I should let him go?
"No. I..."
You do want him dead.
You just... don't want
to have to do it yourself.
So.
We will do this together.
This will be a bonding experience.
You know you can stop this
any time that you want.
But I don't think that you do.
Just say the word.
Say it. "Stop."
Stop.
I will get you another room,
my friend.
With a much nicer view.
He ordered you brown-brown,
Mr. Yuri.
What?
Brown-brown.
What is it?
A mixture of cocaine...
...and gunpowder.
They give it to the young boys
before they do battle.
They'll do anything!
Some other time.
I suggest you try it,
at least once, Mr. Yuri.
Why?
'Cause it's your gunpowder.
Even before that night,
I'd started doing a lot of cocaine
in West Africa.
I'd never tried brown-brown before,
but then I'd never killed a man, either.
Oh.
Oh, I didn't do anything, did I?
I didn't do anything, did I?
You didn't do much.
Wait. Are you sick?
SIDA? AIDS?
Ask the white man. He will know.
Sir, will my hand grow back?
Simeon.
Remember, Yuri, take sides.
Simeon!
Don't! He's Andre's.
Fuck Andre!
Fuck Andre!
I'm sorry they don't usually do that.
Let me look it. Maybe I can fix it.
Let me see it. It's the magazine.
Give it to me.
Fuck you!
I started to feel I'd been cursed.
...the curse of invincibility.
Nicki, please, go to your room.
I don't believe you.
Can you prove any of this?
Mr. Orlov goes to a lot of trouble
to make his business look legitimate.
Even to you.
Perhaps especially to you.
I don't expect we'll find anything here today.
So what do you want?
I was hoping that you would help me.
I understand that uh...
your parents died tragically?
The illegal firearms used to murder
your mother and father
were procured from men exactly
like your husband.
I'd like you to leave.
Okay. Gentlemen.
Ava?
Ava, what's wrong?
I can't wear the clothes.
Can't wear the jewelry.
Can't drive the car.
Can't live in this house.
Everything's got blood on it.
Blood on it?
What's the matter with you?
Don't be so melodramatic.
I'm melodramatic.
I'm a failed actress, remember?
I told you, these people, it's political.
They lie. They're liars.
Look at me. They lie to make
themselves look good, okay?
You can't trust them.
It's not just them.
Don't worry. Your family didn't
say anything.
They didn't have to.
I sell people a means to defend
themselves. Ava.
That's all.
Yuri, I see the news. I see those pictures.
The guns are bigger than the boys!
There is nothing illegal
about what I do!
I don't care if it's legal!
It's wrong!
Please, stop.
It makes no difference if I stop.
Someone will take my place the next day.
So let them. We have enough.
It's not about the money.
Then what is it?
I'm good at it.
I feel like all I've done my whole life
is be pretty.
I mean all I've done is be born.
I'm a failed actress, a failed artist.
I'm not much good as a mother.
I'm not even that pretty anymore.
I have failed at everything, Yuri.
But I won't fail as a human being.
My enemies had finally found a weapon
that could hurt me.
For the next six months,
I stopped running guns.
I went legitimate.
This is an untapped market.
I'm talking over five million
cubic meters of timber
in the first year alone.
Over 100 exploitable species.
The oil?
Between you and me, this...
Ten thousand barrels a month?
He must be lying. He's talking!
Listen, there are gas reserves off the
Ivory Coast that OPEC doesn't
even know about.
The phone numbers all check out.
It's all on the level.
No wonder Valentine was confused.
Thank God there are still legal ways
to exploit developing countries.
The only problem with an honest buck
is they're so hard to make.
The margins are too low.
Too many people are doing it.
Still, I'd promised Ava.
Yuri, the President of Liberia
is on his way up.
He's early.
I'll be back in a minute.
What the fuck are you doing here, Andre?
We are here for peace talks at the
United Nations.
So at the same time you thought
you'd drop in on your arms dealer?
Well, I was beginning to wonder
whether that was still your profession.
You know, you're a hard man
to get a hold of all of Sudden.
That is a shame.
My son and I were hoping to do
a little shopping.
While in New York.
You know they're watching you.
Yes, I know they blame me.
They blame me for everything,
those hypocrites.
There're hunt for a witch.
Witch hunt.
Hostilities have escalated.
And they are making it very
difficult for me to re-supply.
That requires a man of your rare ingenuity.
I can't help you, I'm sorry.
I understand.
But you should know this:
Due to our present situation
we are compelled to be unusually generous.
So, see you soon, Lord of War.
You still haven't brought me
the gun of Rambo.
At four and a half months old...
a human fetus has a reptile's tail...
a remnant of our evolution.
Maybe that's what I couldn't escape.
You can fight a lot of enemies and survive,
but if you fight your biology,
you always lose.
You guys aren't waiting to say goodbye?
I'm not leaving for another ten minutes.
Sorry, Nicki has swim practice.
You know, I'm kind of glad you're going.
You've been here so long
you're starting to get on my nerves.
This oil concession should be
wrapped up by Thursday.
I'll be back for the weekend.
We'll go somewhere.
The sea.
That would be fun.
Come on.
Hey. You trust me, right?
She looked me directly in the eye...
the way I've looked in the eyes
of a thousand customs officials...
government bureaucrats and
law enforcement agents.
Yes, I trust you.
And she lied without flinching.
I'll see you, big guy.
Bye Papa.
She learned from the best.
Have a good trip.
That's him.
Where are we going, Mama?
It's a game, honey.
Like hide and seek?
Yes.
Like hide and seek.
I can always sense
when I'm being tailed.
I know what to look for.
But then I'd never been tailed
by the woman I love.
I can put myself in Ava's place.
She might've understood if the combination
was the last four digits of my
social security number...
my birth date, even her birth date,
but not Nicolai's.
My son's birthday unlocked
what the government would
later describe...
...as "a catalogue of carnage."
Nicki, stay right there.
Come on, Nicki.
Come to see how the other half lives?
I miss your borscht.
Mom and Dad say you're clean.
Yeah, you, too.
You went legit, huh?
That's hard to believe.
That's because it's not true.
Only you know.
I'm leaving tonight on a job
I want you to come.
I can't. I've got a girlfriend.
I think she might be the one.
Plus, I'm thinking of opening
my own place.
Maybe this trip will help.
It's good money.
Yuri, I've given my word.
No one has to know.
Tell them we going for a little R and R.
What do you need me for,
all of sudden?
West Africa's fucked up.
More than usual.
I can't trust anybody.
I need you to watch my back.
Brothers in arms.
Monrovia, Liberia - 2001
Yuri! Welcome back.
Welcome both of you.
Welcome to democracy.
Democracy?
What have you been drinking, Andy?
Huh, you have not seen the news.
You know they accuse me of
rigging elections.
But after this, with your Florida and
you Supreme Court of Kangaroos,
Now, the U.S. Must shut up forever.
How do you do this, Yuri?
How do you do this,
when they are watching all of
my airspace?
Where there's a will,
there's a weapon.
Come on, where's my fucking money?
When it is delivered.
It is delivered.
This is not for me.
This is for my neighbors to the west.
The west?
We're going to Sierra Leone.
Oh, yes. And my son Baptiste Junior
will go with you to make the
proper introductions.
We have no trucks.
You will.
As soon as we get the food out of them.
Gun of Rambo.
Mr. Yuri, you're a man of your word.
So where are we going?
RUF - the Freedom Fighters.
Every faction in Africa calls
themselves by the noble names.
Liberation-this Patriotic-that,
Democratic Republic
of-something-or-other.
I guess they can't own up to
what they usually are
Federation of Worse Oppressors
than the Last Bunch of Oppressors.
Often, the most barbaric atrocities occur
when both combatants proclaim
themselves "freedom fighters."
Right, I've got 500 units, brand new
right out of the box,
all as clean as this. What have you got?
God! Oh, Jesus.
God! Oh, Jesus.
Yuri, I need to talk to you.
Not now.
Now.
Excuse me.
What?
We can't do this deal.
The fuck we can't!
What's the matter with you?
Look, over there.
As soon as we hand over the guns
those people are going to die!
It's not our business.
They killed a boy just now
as young as Nicki.
What is the holdup?
There is no holdup.
I'll be right there.
Vitaly, it's what we always know:
We can't control what they do.
No, no, today we can. Today we can.
Yuri, they're right there!
What do you think they'll do to us
if we back out? They'll kill us.
And if we go ahead, what do you
think they'll do to them?
We've got to do something.
Please, for fuck's sake.
It's not our fight.
Please. Brothers in arms.
What is he saying?
It's the deal.
My brother's not happy with the terms.
We'll work it out. It's nothing.
Right? It's nothing.
Yeah. Nothing.
You're right. Yuri, you're right.
God, I've got to get my shit together.
This is not our fight.
Right.
Okay. What's the deal?
and 800 grenades.
I thought it was 1200 grenades.
I was so caught up in the deal...
I never realized
what was going on in Vitaly's head.
I thought it was 1200 grenades.
Confused.
Come to think about it,
maybe I never understood what
was going on in his head.
I beg your pardon.
May I see another stone?
One thing I do understand
for certain...
...is that Vitaly broke the
cardinal rule of gunrunning.
Never pick up a gun and join
the customers.
What are you doing?
Something for Yuri.
Step away. Slow.
No, Vit!
No! Vit!
Only half the guns were gone...
so I was still entitled to half the diamonds.
If I took them, I was lost.
If I left them, I was lost.
The massacre played out exactly
how Vitaly predicted.
But then, a half-dozen
other massacres
happened in Sierra Leone that week.
You can't stop them all.
In my experience,
you can't stop any of them.
They say evil prevails
when good men fail to act.
What they ought to say is,
evil prevails.
I now shared even more in common...
with the leader of that country God
seemed to have forsaken.
We saw something in each other
that neither of us liked.
Or maybe we were just looking
in the mirror.
I paid a Monrovian doctor
twenty dollars
to remove the lead from
Vitaly's body
and write a bogus death certificate.
I should've paid more.
I've smuggled millions of
rounds of ammunition,
and the bullet that lands me in jail...
is found under my dead brother's rib.
Yuri Orlov.
We're with the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, and Firearms.
Let me guess.
This is not about the alcohol or
the tobacco.
Crimean Restaurant.
Papa?
Both my sons are dead.
There are only two tragedies in life.
One is not getting what you want.
The other is getting it.
Is this one of yours?
Jack Valentine finally had
what he wanted.
Curiously, the death certificate says
he died of heart failure.
Falsifying a death certificate?
That's not gonna hold me.
You're right. As usual, you are right.
Have you seen today's paper? Huh?
Fake end-user certificates.
Cut-out companies,
meticulously catalogued.
There is hardly a warlord, dictator,
despot anywhere in the world
that you're a first-name basis with.
It was your wife your trophy wife
that led us to the prize.
It's not her fault.
She's just easier to follow
than you are.
May I?
Yeah, go ahead.
Enjoy it.
What? This.
Tell me I'm everything you despise.
That I'm the personification of evil.
What?
Responsible for the breakdown of
the fabric of society and world order.
I'm a one-man genocide.
Say everything you want to say
to me now.
Because you don't have long.
Are you paying attention?
Or are you delusional?
You have broken every arms
embargo written.
There is enough here to put you away
for consecutive life sentences.
You are going to spend
the next ten years of your life
going from a cell to a courtroom
before you even start
serving your time.
I don't think you fully
appreciate the seriousness...
...of your situation.
My family has disowned me.
My wife and son have left me.
My brother's dead.
Trust me.
I fully appreciate the seriousness
of my situation.
But I promise you,
I won't spend a single second
in a courtroom.
You are delusional.
I like you, Jack.
Well, maybe not,
but I understand you.
Let me tell you what's gonna happen.
This way, you can prepare yourself.
Okay.
Soon there's going to be
a knock on that door
and you will be called outside.
In the hall there will be
a man who outranks you.
First, he'll compliment you on the
fine job you've done
that you're making the world
a safer place
that you're to receive
a commendation and a promotion.
And then he'll tell you that
I am to be released.
You're gonna protest.
You'll probably threaten to resign.
But in the end, I will be released.
The reason I'll be released
is the same reason you think...
I'll be convicted.
I do rub shoulders with some of
the most vile,
sadistic men calling themselves
leaders today.
But some of those men are
the enemies of your enemies.
And while the biggest arms dealer
in the world is your boss...
...the President of the United States,
who ships more merchandise in a day
I do in a year...
sometimes it's embarrassing to have
his fingerprints on the guns.
Sometimes he needs a freelancer like me
to supply forces
he can't be seen supplying.
So... you call me evil,
but unfortunately for you,
I'm a necessary evil.
I would tell you to go to hell.
But I think you're already there.
Pleasure doing business with you.
Most people are happy
just to get out of jail.
I expect to be paid to leave.
I'm not a fool.
I know that just because they
needed me that day
didn't mean they wouldn't make
me a scapegoat the next.
But I was back,
doing what I do best.
Umbrellas to the Sahara?
Sun umbrellas.
You know who's going to
inherit the Earth?
Arms dealers.
Because everyone else
is too busy killing each other.
That's the secret to survival.
Never go to war.
Especially with yourself.
SkyFury
in world-wide circulation.
That's one firearm for every
twelve people on the planet.
The only question is...
how do we arm the other eleven?
You don't have to worry.
I'm not gonna tell you a pack of
lies to make me look good.
I'm just gonna tell you
what happened.
My name is Yuri Orlov.
When I was a boy,
my family came to America.
But not all the way.
Like most Ukrainians,
we gathered in Brighton Beach.
It reminded us of the Black Sea.
I soon realized we'd just swapped
one hell for another.
Even in hell, an angel
sometimes makes an appearance.
I'd worshipped Ava Fontaine
since I was 10 years old.
Of course, she didn't know I existed.
I was starting to think she had a point.
For the first twenty-odd years of my life...
...Little Odessa was to me what it
is to the Q train...
...the end of the line.
"Little Odessa," New York - 1982
Oh, I did lie about my name.
It's not really Yuri Orlov.
There've been few occasions
in the in the 20th century...
when it's been an advantage be a Jew.
But in the 'seventies,
to escape the Soviet Union,
our family pretended to be Jewish.
Little about my life has been
kosher ever since
How's it going, brother?
It's not.
That's Vitaly, my younger brother.
He was as lost as me.
He didn't know it yet.
Yuri,
you're late.
My father took his assumed
identity to heart.
He was more Jewish than most Jews.
Which drove my Catholic mother crazy.
How many times?
I can't eat shellfish.
It's treyf.
You're not Jewish.
I like it.
I like the hat.
To remind us there is something...
above us.
I like that.
I'm going to temple.
You're not going to temple.
You go to temple more than the rabbi.
Get off my back, woman.
God, will you ever wise up?
Yuri, don't forget to check
the specials at the Palace.
Growing up in Little Odessa,
murder was everyday part of life.
Russian mobsters had also
migrated
from the Soviet Union
and when they came to America,
their baggage came with them.
There was always some gangster
getting whacked in my
neighborhood,
but I'd never seen it with my own eyes.
I had this knack of showing up
five minutes before something went down,
or five minutes after.
Not that day.
It hit me.
It couldn't have hit me harder
if I was the one who'd been shot.
You go into the restaurant business...
because people are always going
to have to eat.
That was the day I realized my destiny...
...lay in fulfilling another basic
human need.
The next Sabbath,
I went to temple with my father.
However, it wasn't God
I was trying to get close to.
Eli, my eldest son, Yuri.
My contact at synagogue landed me
my first Israeli-made Uzi
submachine guns.
The first time you sell a gun...
is a lot like the first time you have sex.
You have absolutely no idea
what you're doing.
But it is exciting and one way
or another,
it's over way too fast.
Gentlemen.
The new Uzi machine pistol.
Big firepower in a small package.
This little baby uses 9 mm hollow points.
Twenty twenty-five round extendable mags...
...rear-flip adjustable sights.
Silencer comes standard.
Excellent recoil reduction.
Muzzle jump reduced forty percent.
Sixty percent improved noise
suppression.
You could pump a mag into me
right now
and never wake the guy
in the next room.
Of course, that would eliminate your
opportunity for repeat business.
I did have a natural instinct
for smuggling contraband.
Fortunately, back then a video camera
was a big as a bazooka
Here I'd been running away from violence
my whole life, and I should've
run towards it.
It's in our nature.
The earliest human skeletons had
spearheads in their rib cages.
Where have you been?
What if we had a customer?
God bless America.
Beware of the dog?
You don't have a dog.
Are you trying to scare people?
No, it's to scare me.
Remind me to be aware of the dog in me.
The dog wants to fuck everything
that moves
Wants to fight and kill weaker dogs.
I guess it's to remind me to be
more human.
Isn't being a dog part of being human?
What if that's the best part of you?
The dog part.
What if you're really just a
two-legged dog?
You need to see somebody.
Stinks in here.
I'd always wanted to do something
big with my life
I just didn't know what.
Anyhow, I figured,
if I was going into the gun trade,
I was going aim high.
Vitaly, stop fucking around.
I want to talk to you.
You read the newspapers, Vit?
Newspaper? It's always the same.
You're right.
Every day there's people shooting
each other.
You know what I do when I see that?
I look to see what guns they're using
and I think to myself, why not my guns?
What, are you opening a gun shop?
Already more of those in than
McDonald's.
Even with all the gangsters around here,
the margins are too low.
You've figured the margins?
Sure.
Forget gang wars.
The real money is in actual wars.
Between countries.
Yuri, what the fuck do you know
about guns?
I know which end I'd rather be on.
I made the first sale.
We're already in business.
Whoa, whoa. We?
I need a partner.
I don't know,
I don't know, Yuri. I don't know.
Vitaly, I've tasted your borscht.
You're no fucking chef.
I can eat in the restaurant for free
and I still don't eat there.
Fuck you.
We're doing nothing with our lives.
I mean, this is shit!
This is shit!
It's true.
But maybe doing nothing's
better than doing this.
I need you.
Brothers in arms.
Brothers in arms.
Sir, may I interest you in the
shoulder-fired SA-7
surface-to-air missiles?
The older Chinese model.
Not so effective against
modern military aircraft. But deadly...
if used against a commercial airliner.
I'm giving them away at 8-50.
In the '80s, and the Cold War was
far from thawed
Most of the deals were
government-to-government.
It was a mostly private club...
...with a lifetime club president.
That's him.
The big shot?
Simeon Weisz, Angola,
Mozambique,
those Exocet missiles
in the Falklands.
He was selling guns before
there was gunpowder.
Be right back.
Mr. Weisz? Mr. Weisz!
It's okay, they're talking.
May I help?
A mutual friend, Eli Kurtzman
from Brighton Beach,
import/export said to contact you.
I have a business proposal
and I thought perhaps we could
discuss it.
I don't think you and I are
in the same business.
You think I just sell guns,
don't you?
I don't. I take sides.
But in the Iran-Iraq war
you sold guns to both sides.
Did you ever consider that
I wanted both sides to lose?
Bullets change governments far
surer than votes.
You're in the wrong place,
my young friend.
This is no place for amateurs.
Motherfucker.
Curious how you always revert to
your native tongue
in moments of extreme anger.
And ecstasy.
Oh God... Oh, God!
You are beautiful.
What's your name again?
The only option for Vitaly and me
was under-the-counter gunrunning.
Beirut, Lebanon - 1984
I got my first break in Lebanon
after the suicide bombing.
But I wasn't the only local kid
making good.
When the United States leaves a war zone...
they generally don't take
their munitions.
It costs more to bring it back
than to buy new stock.
So, we sell by the kilo.
They're secondhand weapons,
but they're still okay.
How many kilos would you like?
Five thousand.
I had a flair for languages...
...but I soon discovered that what
talks best is dollars, dinars...
...drachmas, rubles, rupees, and
pounds-fucking-sterling.
Of course, the U.S. Army got a
piece of the action.
Army salaries were no better then
than they are today.
And some of the brass,
like Lieutenant Colonel Southern...
needed to raise money for their
own private wars.
Good to make your acquaintance.
This is bullshit money,
This is small-fucking-potatoes.
What do you want to do, go more legit?
No, more illegal.
What I would give right now
for cabbage and potatoes.
It's not our fight.
Vit, come on!
Let's go. Come on.
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 every army but the
Salvation Army.
I sold Israeli-made Uzis to Muslims.
I sold communist-made bullets
to fascists.
I hope you're not thinking of
selling these, Mr. Orlov.
Personal use.
Personal use.
There's a hundred thousand
bullets here.
I'm kind of trigger happy.
Trigger happy?
I even shipped cargo to Afghanistan
when they were still fighting my
fellow Soviets.
I never sold to Osama Bin Laden.
Not on any moral grounds.
Back then, he was always
bouncing checks.
By the mid-'80s...
my weapons were represented in eight...
...of the world's top ten war zones.
There's no problem leading a double life.
It's the triple and quadruple lives
that get you in the end.
Back then, I carried a... French,
British, Israeli,
and Ukrainian passport...
...and a student visa for the U.S.,
but... that's another story.
I also packed six different briefcases...
...depending on who I was that day
and the region of the world I was visiting.
North of Cartagena, Colombia - 1989
Without operations like mine,
would be impossible for certain
countries
to conduct a respectable war.
I was able to navigate around those
inconvenient little arms embargoes.
There are three basic types
of arms deal.
White, being legal.
Black, being illegal,
and my personal favorite color, gray.
Sometimes I made the deal
so convoluted...
it was hard for me to work out
if they were on the level.
To keep authorities in the dark
I often spoke in code.
Rocket launchers were "mothers."
The rockets, "children."
The AK-47 assault rifle was
the "Angel King."
It's Yuri... Yeah. Well, Raoul...
Raoul, the Angel King will arrive tomorrow.
Hallelujah to you, too.
The point is, if I've done my job right
an arms embargo should be
practically impossible to enforce.
What?
Okay, just slow the fuck down.
I can't understand you.
Wha-What do you mean, tipped off?
They know where we are?
Well, where are they?
Well, how long have I got?
Not long?
What does that mean? Shit!
Do we try to lose them?
On this?
Yuri, we have to get off this thing.
No. No one's going anywhere.
Slow, dead slow. Buy me time.
Yeah, it's Yuri.
Get that fucking rag down!
I need another handle for this tub.
Something in our weight class.
You! Over the side.
We're changing the name. Now!
Yes, it's got to check out.
The way I look at it,
what's in a name?
Have you got a shorter name?
I'd often changed the registration
of a ship or a plane...
...but never on such short notice.
Damn! They're hauling.
What? Kono? How do you spell
that?
K-O-N-O, okay, well, that's good.
Kono, K-O-N-O.
What are we flying? Dutch? Got it.
Vit, get me a Dutch flag, will you?
Faster! Or I'll send your ass in!
Yuri, I don't have Dutch!
What?
I've got Belgian.
What the fuck use is that?
He's painting a name registered
in the fucking Netherlands.
I've got a French flag.
So?
Turn it sideways...
...it's Dutch.
That's why you're my brother.
All right, good!
Everybody look innocent now.
They say every man has his price.
But not every man gets it.
Interpol Agent Jack Valentine
couldn't be bought.
At least, not with money.
For Jack, glory was the prize.
Yeah, it's the Kono;
it's not the Kristol.
Kono, K-O-N-O.
It's clean, sir.
It's clean?
It sure doesn't look clean.
I'm going to go aboard.
Phone in a sighting of the
Kristol south of Aruba.
Even when I was up against an
overzealous agent...
...I had a number of methods for
discouraging a search.
I routinely mislabeled my arms shipments
"Farm Machinery."
And I have yet to meet the lowly
paid customs official...
...who will open a container...
...marked "Radioactive Waste"
to verify its contents.
But my personal favorite is
the unique combination...
of week-old potatoes and tropical heat.
Smells.
Sir, Sighting of the Kristol, due north.
Most importantly, I kept a number
of intelligence people
on the payroll to supply their colleagues
with counterintelligence.
Let's go.
The second rule of gunrunning is:
Always ensure you have a
foolproof way to get paid.
Preferably in advance...
ideally to an off-shore account.
That's why I chose my customers
so carefully.
Say what you like about warlords
and dictators...
they tend to have a highly
developed sense of order.
They always pay their bills on time.
What is this?
Six kilos of pure.
I can't hand this to my fucking bank
teller at Chase Manhattan.
Listen, asshole, you should be
thanking me.
Have you checked the street price today?
With the seizures at the border last week,
it's jumped thirty percent.
Whoa... whoa-whoa!
I sell guns. I don't sell drugs.
Diversify.
I've got standards.
You don't pay, you don't play.
Fuck you!
What are you doing?
Fuck you!
Fuck you!
No, you don't fuck him.
We can work something out.
No, Vit!
We have a deal!
The first and most important
rule of gunrunning...
is never get shot with your own
merchandise.
Are you okay?
I think so.
So what do we do now?
Let's celebrate.
That narco guerilla had his facts right.
After shipping it stateside,
the return on that blow
netted me a healthy profit.
It would have been even better,
except one kilo never made it back.
Vitaly?
Vit!
To this day I don't know what Vitaly...
...was running away from.
Maybe just from Vitaly.
I found him twelve days,
two thousand miles,
and one hundred and fifty grams later
in a Bolivian boarding house.
Of course, my dream girl
had gone there before me.
Vit!
Come on!
Fuck, Yuri's back.
It's my brother, Yuri.
He's my big brother.
What the fuck is that?
Ukraine.
I was young, but I remember.
Look... I start in Odessa, right?
And then I work my way to the
Crimean
You'll be dead before you fucking
reach Kiev!
We're going home. Come on,
You fuck! You fucking fuck!
You fucking fuck...
What the fuck is your problem?
Come on, Vit.
J.F.K. Airport, New York - 1989
Yuri, it's so nice to be home.
Yeah, good work.
We're gonna get you home.
Come on.
St. Francis Rehabilitation Center
Get out of the car.
Vitaly, I need you to get out of the car.
I promised our parents.
Please.
Vitaly, you're going to have a great time.
This is a top place.
Two Ford models checked in last week.
And that cute weather girl's been
here since July.
Please.
Please, Yuri.
You're a good brother.
You're a good brother, Yuri.
Okay. All right.
Good brother.
All right. Get out of the car.
Okay
Get out of the car.
From then on I was a one-man operation.
I never understood what separated...
the recreational drug user from
the habitual.
But for the grace of God...
it could've been me snorting lines
as long as the Belt Parkway.
However, I wasn't entirely free
of the grip of addiction myself.
There she was again.
Ava Fontaine.
In my neighborhood they say,
"The good get out."
In our own ways, we'd both
conquered the world.
St. Barts, French Caribbean - 1989
You can't force somebody to
fall in love with you.
But you can definitely improve your odds.
It cost me 20 grand to book he
for a fake photo shoot.
Another twelve to buy out the hotel.
Popular hotel, huh?
Ava Fontaine.
Yuri Orlov.
What brings you to St. Barts?
Photo shoot.
At least, that was the plan.
I guess the photographer got
stuck in Miami.
Hurricane. Though there's nothing
on the news.
Those things can come out of nowhere.
So... the job's been cancelled,
and wouldn't you know it,
there's no flight to New York until Tuesday.
You can hitch a ride with me if you like.
I'm leaving tomorrow.
Meanwhile, why don't I take your picture?
In my experience,
some of the most successful
relationships...
are based on lies and deceit.
Since that's where they usually
end up anyway...
it's a logical place to start.
Right there. Hold it there.
Oh, my God!
I nearly went broke trying to
convince her I was anything but.
I knew Ava was not the kind of woman
to be seduced by a ride in a private jet
unless you owned the jet.
This is your plane?
That is my name.
Of course, I was lying.
The plane was rented, like the car
and even the suit I was standing in
At the last minute,
I'd bribed the crew for the paint job.
Luckily, by the time we landed...
Ava wasn't looking anywhere
but in my eyes.
I had no idea.
I'm sorry I didn't recognize you.
Don't apologize. I put clothes on
for a living.
A least you're not taking them off.
I would be, if half the...
...photographers had their way.
What about you?
I'm in transport.
International air freight, mostly.
Business is good.
Where're you from?
I was born in Ukraine,
but I grew up in Brooklyn.
No.
What, you too?
Williamsburg.
Here's to a hurricane.
Without it, I never would have met you.
This is no accident, is it, Yuri?
It feels like fate.
I don't believe in fate.
What do you believe in?
Is that a view, or is that a view?
That's a view.
Thank you. Thank you all.
Congratulations.
Congratulations.
Thanks.
Always remember, son...
There is something above you.
Sure, Dad.
A forty-thousand-dollar crystal chandelier.
Make yourselves at home. Go!
Go!
I'm sorry. Today must be tough.
It'd be nice to have a couple
more guests
from my side of the family.
I'm sure they're watching right now.
Thank you.
But you don't believe that, Yuri...
...remember?
I know you, Yuri.
I know you're not everything you seem.
Don't worry, I won't ask a lot of questions.
I don't want to hear you lie.
You take risks.
Just promise me you won't risk us.
That's the trouble with falling in love
with a dream girl.
They have a habit of becoming real.
I've never been so glad to see Vitaly.
You're fucking beautiful!
Brother...
Brother, thank you so much...
for giving me such a beautiful sister.
He was out of rehab, and out of his mind.
Dance! Dance! We have to dance!
All right, all right
It's a wedding, a celebration
To Yuri!
For once, he rescued me.
New York - December 25, 1991
I was still living way beyond my means.
Mortgaged to the hilt, using one
credit card to pay another.
Anything to keep Ava in the style to
which she had thanks largely to me
become accustomed.
Ava
Ava, this is too much.
Yuri likes to spoil you.
Then suddenly,
all my Christmases came at once.
Nicki, you did it! Good boy!
That's my grandson!
Yuri, don't you want to see what
your son is doing?
Whoever said it's better to give
than receive...
...never got a Christmas present
like the one I got...
in 1991 from Mikhail Gorbachev.
What the hell's the matter?
It's over!
What's over?
The Cold-fucking-War!
The Soviet-fucking Union
The Evil fucking-Empire!
Mikhail's saying no mas.
He's throwing in the towel.
It's over!
Your son is walking.
That's incredible, honey.
At least they'll get religious freedom.
Let's hope so.
I think I'll go back for a visit.
Do you stay in touch with Uncle Dmitri?
I'm not a fool, Yuri.
I don't think you're going to
Odessa to sell Pepsi-Cola.
Is this how you want to be remembered?
I don't want to be remembered at all.
I'm being remembered,
it means I'm dead.
Merry-fucking-Christmas!
Who is this, Vitaly?
I'm Angel.
Her name really is Angel.
She's a fairy.
Let's put her on top of the
Christmas tree.
Come on
I love you.
Come on.
I love you all.
Take this.
I'm going back to Ukraine.
I miss Odessa.
I miss you.
I miss you.
Be careful, Yuri. Those things
you sell kill.
Inside.
You're high.
That's true.
Hello, Christian.
Odessa, Ukraine - 1992
During the Cold War, the Red
Army stationed nearly
one million troops in Ukraine...
because of its strategic military importance.
The day after The Wall came down...
the paychecks stopped coming.
Your papers.
There's nothing better for an arms dealer...
combination of disgruntled soldiers
and warehouses full of weapons.
Welcome.
I was hoping Major General Dmitri Volkoff
would open a lot of armory doors
in a lot of military bases.
For a start, he was family.
He was a highly decorated hero
of the Red Army,
and he was almost permanently
shit-faced
I can't just sell you government
property, Yuri.
I have to report.
Report to who? Moscow?
As of last week
Moscow's in a foreign country.
New flag, new boss.
There is no new boss yet.
They're all too busy squabbling over
who's gonna get the presidential
holiday home
at the Black Sea.
It's beautiful.
The ones who know don't care any more
and the ones who care don't know.
Show me your inventory.
Those 45 years of mutual hatred
between the East and the West...
had generated the highest weapons
buildup in history.
The Soviets had guns
coming out of the demon hole.
Huge stockpiles, and now no enemy.
How many Kalashnikovs do you have?
Forty thousand.
Is that a four?
It doesn't look like a four to me.
It's more like a one.
No, it's a four.
It's whatever we say it is.
Because no one else will know
the difference?
Ten thousand Kalashnikovs for
a Your stocks are battalion.
Your stocks are dangerously
depleted, Dmitri.
You should order more from the factory.
Someone will work it out.
What happens then?
We'll cut them in.
The end of the Cold War
was the beginning of the hottest
time in arms dealing.
The arms bazaar was open.
Guided missiles, unguided missiles.
Mortars, mines,
armored personnel carriers.
Whole tank divisions.
I'll tell you what I'll do.
Buy six, you get one free.
I even landed a squadron of
helicopter gunships.
The most sophisticated fighting
machines...
built for a war with America that
never happened.
Son, get off there before you get hurt.
I can take it apart with my eyes closed.
Thanks to me,
they'd finally get to fire a shot in anger.
I have a feeling it wasn't exactly
what Comrade Lenin had in mind
when he advocated the
redistribution of wealth.
But I wasn't the only one
offering a crash course in capitalism.
I had rivals.
Inform your commanding officer
that Simeon Weisz is here to meet him.
You don't know who I am, do you?
I don't give a fuck who you are.
You're late.
So it appears.
Thank you.
My pleasure.
You sell guns?
Maybe you'd like to come to my room
and I'll show you my... cannon.
You look a little lost, Simeon.
Is the world changing too fast?
I'm here, aren't I?
Not all of you, I think.
You've gotten so rich selling for the CIA
you can't seem to get that ideology
completely out of your head.
Oh, the Cold War had its uses.
Kept the tensions frozen.
Now it's harder to determine
which side one's on.
Things have become more complicated.
No, it's gotten simpler.
There's no place in gunrunning
for politics anymore,
I sell to leftists and rightists.
I sell to pacifists,
but they're not the most regular of
customers.
Of course, you're not a true
internationalist...
...until you've supplied weapons
to kill your own countrymen.
This current state of chaos won't
last forever.
There'll have to be order.
Instead of cutting each other's throats,
it may be beneficial if we work together.
What do you think?
What do I think?
I think you are the amateur now,
and I think you should go with
your instincts.
With your first instinct.
I'm the same man who was not
good enough for you before...
and I'm just not good enough
for you now.
The problem with gunrunners
going to war
is that there's no shortage of ammunition.
This was the chaos
that the Old Guard had always feared.
As far as they were concerned,
I was giving arms dealers a bad name.
But they could hardly report me
to the Better Business Bureau.
And Ukraine wasn't the only former state...
with an unpaid army and stockpiles of guns.
There was Bulgaria, Hungary,
Poland, Belarus...
all there for the taking.
Of all the weapons in the vast
Soviet arsenal...
nothing was more profitable than
Avtomat Kalashnikova,
model of 1947,
more commonly known as the
AK-47... or kalashnikov.
It's the world's most popular
assault rifle
a weapon all fighters love.
An elegantly simple nine-pound
amalgamation of forged steel
and plywood.
It doesn't break, jam, or overheat.
It will shoot whether it's covered in mud
or filled with sand.
It's so easy, even a child can use it
and they do.
The Soviets put the gun on a coin.
Mozambique put it on their flag.
Since the end of the Cold War,
the Kalashnikov has become the...
...Russian people's greatest export.
After that comes vodka, caviar,
and suicidal novelists.
One thing's for sure
no one was lining up to buy their cars.
What fucking documents?
You listen to me, Lieutenant.
You keep them there.
For as long as you can!
Fight You listen to me, Lieutenant.
To the death! Moscow is behind us!
It's an order!
I thought you supposed watching
out for these people.
How can I?
You keep selling my helicopters.
You are too greedy, Yuri!
I can't hold him forever.
I've got paperwork.
Not for the gunships.
You know the penalty for
sanction-busting.
Selling the military helicopter
is a major violation.
Military helicopter.
It's not a military helicopter.
It's a rescue helicopter.
Get to work, son.
No problem.
The law's on our side.
All right, let me see your papers.
No-no-no, put that away.
See your papers.
Yuri Orlov.
Mr. Orlov, always In the wrong
place at the right time.
What the fuck is this?
We've met before.
Off the coast Colombia.
What was the name of that freighter?
I can't remember, was it the Kono
or the Kristol?
The crew called that vessel a lot of names.
None repeatable in polite company.
Answer the question.
The new MP-5.
Would you like a silencer for that?
I need to see your papers.
Get the fuck off me.
Dmitri!
The end-user certificate for this aircraft...
states "Burkina Faso."
Nice, very nice.
Did you type this up yourself?
The helicopter is to be used on
humanitarian missions.
Oh, so you're a humanitarian?
Oh, absolutely.
This is a military aircraft.
Not anymore.
Listen to the nephew!
What can they do with military hardware
but convert it to civilian use?
The only way you could die from this baby
now is if a food drop hits you.
And this stuff over here, huh?
Is it going to Burkina Faso... Ah,
but to a different client at a
different address.
That's just a coincidence is that it?
Do you take me for a complete
fucking fool?
Not complete, sir.
And while I hesitate to tell your job.
I must point out that
when shipped separately,
the weapons and the aircraft
both comply with current Interpol
trade standards and practices.
We both know, that is an obscene
bureaucratic loophole that's gonna
be closed
any goddamn day.
But it's not closed.
And while certain people might interpret
this cargo as suspicious,
thank God we live in a world,
where suspicion alone
does not constitute a crime.
And men like you
respect the rule of law.
I was as guilty as sin,
but Valentine couldn't prove it.
And he was the rarest breed of
law enforcement officer,
the type who knew I was breaking the law,
but wouldn't break it himself to bust me.
TWO DAYS LATER
Valentine wasn't the only one trying to
put me out of business.
My uncle had turned down a half
dozen rival arms dealers,
sometimes with offers better than mine.
But to Dmitri, you couldn't put
a price on loyalty.
What was he doing here?
He is hoping to beat your offer.
I told him to go have intercourse
with himself.
But Yuri
You need to make more payoffs.
Too many know.
Don't worry.
There are more VCRs and cigarettes.
I left them in your new car.
Even your enemy was admiring that car.
I'm the luckiest man alive.
You are.
Hello.
Ava?
Hi, baby.
You forgot what time it is?
Sorry, I...
How was that your audition?
They're going in another direction.
Direction with someone who can act.
They don't deserve you.
Where are you?
Is everything okay?
It was a rough day at the office.
Come home.
Soon. How's Nicki?
He misses you. We both do.
It's lonely without you here.
You know I don't like nights.
Ever since my parents...
Yuri, what's that?
A party.
I'd better go.
Just wanted to call and hear your voice.
Kiss Nicki for me.
I love you.
The pillaging didn't die with my uncle.
After The Wall came down
$32 billion billion dollars worth of arms
were stolen and resold from
Ukraine alone,
one of the greatest heists of the
Monrovia, Liberia - 1995
The primary market was Africa.
Eleven major conflicts involving
thirty-two countries in less than a decade...
A gunrunner's wet dream.
At the time, the West couldn't care less.
They had a white war in what was
left of Yugoslavia.
I did the bulk of my business in Liberia...
"Land of the Free." Originally
established as a homeland for
freed American slaves,
it's been enslaved by one dictator
or another ever since.
The latest was American-educated,
self declared president, Andre Baptiste.
Mr. Yuri!
I'm Andre Baptiste, Junior.
My father would like to meet you.
What an honor.
Thank him.
But unfortunately I have other business.
It's a shame, it's a very busy schedule.
It is not, as they say, optional.
My father is easily offended.
My schedule just freed up.
President Baptiste was my best customer
but I was in no hurry to meet him.
He'd gotten a reputation for
routinely hacking off the
limbs of those who opposed him.
His seven-year civil war has been
described...
as "a relentless campaign of
sadistic wanton violence."
That kind of sums up Andy for me.
The Glock is interesting.
It's made of a polymer composite.
Many of my clients feel they can
get through airport security
without setting off a lot of bells
and whistles.
Personally I do not recommend that.
On the other hand,
if you are looking for a traditional
wheel gun,
there is no substitute for the six inches
of muzzle energy of a.357 magnum.
And of course, it will never jam.
Why did you do that?
What did you say?
Now you'll have to buy it.
It's a used gun.
How can I sell a used gun?
A used gun.
A used gun.
That's a good one.
You know there is no discipline
with the youth today.
I try to set an example but it is
difficult, eh?
Personally, I blame MTV.
A used gun.
I think you and I, we can do business.
If I thought I was scared of
Andre Senior,
I knew I was scared of Andre Junior.
Like father, like son.
The guava doesn't fall too far
from the tree.
He was also a cannibal.
They say Andre would eat a victim's heart
while it was still beating
to give him superhuman strength.
Monrovia itself was like being on
another planet.
Planet Monrovia.
From the temperature,
it was obviously a planet close to
the sun.
I rarely saw another white man,
and I never left town alone.
Outside town was the edge of hell.
I didn't want to even gaze into it.
This is your hotel. Two stars.
Can you bring me the gun of Rambo?
Part one, two, or three?
I've only seen part one.
The M-60.
Would you like the armor-piercing
bullets?
Please.
My father left a welcoming
present in your room.
Enjoy.
My God, she nearly got her head cut off.
When I get to America,
I will not live in Brentwood.
Second floor.
In the most AIDS-infested region
of the globe...
where one in four is infected...
Andre's idea of a joke was to put
a young Iman and a young Naomi
in my bed.
And no condom within 100 miles.
Hello, Mr. Yuri.
Hi.
We'd be happy to make you happy.
Uh, I can't. I'd love to.
But I can't.
Don't worry.
We don't have anything.
How do you know?
Do we look like it?
What if I have AIDS?
Don't you worry?
You worry too much.
Why do you worry about
something that
can kill you in ten years
when there are so many things
that can kill you today?
Now...
...how can we make you happy?
By leaving.
These are my Kalashnikov Kids.
My Boy Brigades.
I can see what you are thinking,
but we need every man we can get.
Even if they're not men?
A bullet from a fourteen-year-old...
...is just as effective as one from
a forty-year-old.
Often more effective.
No one can stop this bath of blood.
It's not "bath of blood."
It's "bloodbath."
Thank you.
But I prefer it my way.
I am not going to pay your asking price.
We are not a rich people.
And besides,
the market is already flooded with
your Kalashnikovs.
Do you realize in some parts of
my country
you can get one for the price of a chicken?
But you can't just consider unit price.
You forget ancillary costs.
End-user certificates need to be
forged and notarized,
Shell companies set up,
insurance purchased,
pilots and crews hired.
Not to mention bribes.
You can't get a nut and bolt out
of the Eastern Bloc without a bribe.
There's one bribe for the nut,
another for the bolt.
Andy... Andy, listen to me.
This is an expensive proposition.
"Andy"?
I am going to pay you in timber or stones.
I'll take the stones.
It's kind of hard to get a tree trunk
into my hand luggage.
I know you're planning a new offensive.
If you can delay a week,
I can get you armored personnel carriers.
They'd greatly reduce your casualties...
...and give you a significant
strategic advantage.
You know, they call me
the Lord Of War.
But perhaps it is you.
It's not "Lord Of War," it's "Warlord."
Thank you, but I prefer it my way.
Conflict diamonds are a common
currency in West Africa,
also referred to as "blood diamonds"
since bloodshed is what they
generally finance.
By the late '90s, my wealth had caught up
to my lies about my wealth.
Even surpassed my lies.
I could even afford to become a
patron of the arts.
It's just that I can't believe it.
Well, of... of course, it's wonderful.
I just...
I didn't expect it to happen so soon.
Yes. Well, that wou-that would be
great, too yeah.
It's wonderful. Thank you so much.
It's... Yuri. Okay, thank you. Bye.
Yuri, that was the dealer on the phone.
I just sold my first painting.
Aah! That's fantastic.
Uh, who bought it?
It's someone important.
They want to remain anonymous.
This is so wonderful!
How was your trip?
You know, same old, same old.
Where's Nicki?
Oh, in bed, I'm sorry.
He couldn't stay up.
That's best.
My first painting!
I'm officially an artist!
This calls for a drink.
What doesn't?
Hi.
Yuri, this is uh...
Candy.
Candy. Of course.
Any friend of my brother's is a...
friend of my brother's.
You have a beautiful... everything.
Yes, he does.
Yes, I do.
I'm going to kiss Nicki goodnight.
Okay.
How are you, brother?
Well, you know,
still the resident family fuckup.
Yeah. Well, I guess someone has
to do it.
Well.
Hey, Ava knows, right?
I never want to say anything,
She doesn't have to know.
She understands.
She's a survivor, like me.
She may be a survivor,
but she's not like you.
Really She doesn't know
how you pay for all this
We don't talk about it.
How many car salesman talk
about their work? Huh?
How many cigarette salesmen?
Both their products kill more people
every year than mine.
At least mine has a safety switch.
If those guys can leave their work
at the office,
so can I.
God damn, you are good!
You really are.
You almost had me convinced.
Could you...
could you help me out with...
Why?
Why?
Why?
Why what?
Why?
Why?
I don't know.
Why...
I don't know.
Why what?
Why're you so fucked up all the time?
Because I am. I don't know.
I didn't know how much Ava
really knew...
and how much she ignored.
She never questioned how a guy
in the transport business...
could afford to give her 18 carat
diamond earrings.
I guess she didn't want to hear the answer.
Mostly, She seemed content
that I was a good provider...
and as far as she was concerned, loyal.
Despite the other women...
I always made love to Ava
as if she was the only one.
I'm not saying I didn't have setbacks.
It's not called gunrunning for nothing.
You gotta be fast on your feet.
Some revolutions blow over
the guns even get there.
There's nothing's more expensive
for an arms dealer than peace.
Truce? What do you mean, truce?
The guns are already on their way.
Peace talks.
All right, forget it.
I'll re-route the shipment to the Balkans.
When they talk about war,
they keep their word.
Of course, a new breed of gunrunner
requires a new breed of cop.
Henry, take Park Avenue.
Take 'em on a tour of New Jersey.
Yuri, there are men going through
our garbage cans.
Well, it's probably just some reporters
looking for somebody else.
I have a feeling they don't work
for the tabloids.
Yuri...
is there anything I should be
worried about?
No, nothing.
Nothing?
I love you.
I love you, too.
Sir.
I was now the best merchant
of death alive.
I didn't own my own plane,
I owned a fleet.
Running guns into Liberia,
Sierra Leone,
or the Ivory Coast at least once a week.
Most trips I had phony paperwork.
The deadline was tight
and I had to cut corners,
I had no paperwork at all.
But I wasn't overly concerned.
There was hardly any radar over
most of Africa
and even fewer people to watch it.
Charlie Echo India,
...re-route to Kabala airport...
...on heading zero-two nine.
Comply immediately.
Yuri, what the fuck is going on?
Hello, Southern? It's Yuri.
I Sorry to call you on this number.
But I've got Interpol's all over my ass.
I can't know you right now.
It's uh, not a good time.
Not a good time?
Motherfucker!
Charlie, Echo, India,
comply immediately.
This is your last warning.
Where was the first fucking warning?
Rock your wings
if you intend to comply
I'm putting us down.
If you land, we're going away.
I don't have paperwork.
We're in a flying fucking bomb!
They're firing bullets at our bullets.
I'm putting us down.
Okay, okay. Fuck!
This is Charlie, Echo, India.
Request re-route to Kabala airport,
bearing zero-two-nine.
No, not the airport. There the highway.
It's our only hope.
Are you fucking mad?
A pothole will set us off.
You underestimate yourself, Alexei.
You're the best.
You're the shit, Alexei, you're the shit!
You're the shit! You're the shit!
Of course Alexei wasn't the best.
He'd come forty-second out of
forty three
at the Moscow Flight School.
Oh, God, what's he doing?
Is this guy nuts?
I can't land there, sir.
Kabala's fifteen minutes away.
He can't get far.
I want a truck on the tarmac.
We gonna be okay.
Where are you going?
As far from the evidence as we can get.
Wait, there's not going to be any evidence!
Come here. Come here.
Hey, don't be shy. Here, look.
Free sample
help yourself, okay? Free sample.
Tell your friend.
Gun for you.
Happy times. Come on.
Help yourselves. No charge.
Everything goes.
Guns, guns, guns, yes,
come on up!
Here! You're having fun now, huh?
Come on! Guns, guns, guns! Yes!
Bullets, guns, grenades!
Take 'em all.
Take the whole crate. Go ahead.
Gun, grenades, hooray!
Bullets! Guns! Grenades!
Yeah.
That one's got your name on it.
You want one, too? Come on.
Don't forget the bullets.
Don't forget the bullets.
How can you shoot a gun
if you don't have bullets?
Everything goes for free!
Guns, grenades! All you see. Bullets,
guns, grenades.
Hooray, hooray!
Have the bullets.
What a cargo crew at Heathrow Airport
does in a day took a bunch of
malnourished Sierra Leonean
locals ten minutes.
By the time Agent Valentine got there,
you could find more guns on
a plane full of Quakers.
Yuri Orlov.
Ow! Fuck!
You run from us?
No, Mbizi. No!
Can you run with no legs?
Let me make him disappear,
Mr. Valentine
Around here, people disappear all the time.
I can't do that.
Look where we are. Who will know?
We will.
He's gonna get what's coming to him.
I'm not as certain.
All right, get up.
What's the charge?
What are you doing in Sierra Leone...
I'm on safari.
Yeah? You're hunting wildebeests
with a submachine gun?
Do you also work with the
Park Service?
Hunting without a license,
is that the charge?
Why are we playing games?
You traffic arms.
Trade.
Trade.
Traffic.
You get rich by giving the
poorest people on the planet
the means to continue killing each other.
Do you know why I do what I do?
I mean, there are more
prestigious assignments.
Keeping track of nuclear arsenals,
You'd think that's more critical to
world security,
but it's not.
No, nine out of ten war victims today
are killed with assault rifles and
small like yours.
Those nuclear missiles?
They sit in their silos. Your AK-47?
That is the real weapon of mass
destruction.
I don't want people dead, Agent Valentine.
I don't put a gun to anybody's head
and make them shoot.
I admit, but shooting war is better
for business,
but I prefer people to
fire my guns and miss.
Just as long as they're firing.
Can I go now?
You've got nothing on me.
Except cuffs.
Since you're so concerned with the law,
you must know that I'm legally
permitted to hold you for
twenty- four hours
without charging you.
You might ask why I would do
that and I can assure you.
It's not because I enjoy your
company,
because I don't.
No, the reason why
I'll delay you for every second
of the permissible twenty-four hours
Is I'm delaying your deadly trade
and the deaths of your victims.
I don't think of it as taking a day from you...
...but giving a day to them.
Some innocent man, woman, or child
is going to have an extra day
on this earth because you're not free.
So, I will see you in twenty-three hours
and fifty-five minutes, hm?
Valentine knew he didn't have to guard me.
There was nowhere to go.
Or maybe he was hoping the locals
would tear me apart.
But they were too busy with the plane.
It's like parking your car
in certain neighborhoods in the Bronx.
You just don't do it.
The way I looked at it
it's the way of Africa, maybe life.
Everything that comes from the earth
eventually returns.
Even a 40-ton Atonov-12 cargo plane.
A gift. For you.
You know, you've arrived just in time.
I was afraid that he might die
before you got your chance to kill him.
This man came here hoping to
take your place.
Is that not so?
No, I'm not here to supply
Mr. Baptiste.
I am here to supply his enemies.
I fear it's a sale I shall never complete.
He killed your blood... Your uncle...
when he tried to kill you.
No.
No?
You want that I should let him go?
"No. I..."
You do want him dead.
You just... don't want
to have to do it yourself.
So.
We will do this together.
This will be a bonding experience.
You know you can stop this
any time that you want.
But I don't think that you do.
Just say the word.
Say it. "Stop."
Stop.
I will get you another room,
my friend.
With a much nicer view.
He ordered you brown-brown,
Mr. Yuri.
What?
Brown-brown.
What is it?
A mixture of cocaine...
...and gunpowder.
They give it to the young boys
before they do battle.
They'll do anything!
Some other time.
I suggest you try it,
at least once, Mr. Yuri.
Why?
'Cause it's your gunpowder.
Even before that night,
I'd started doing a lot of cocaine
in West Africa.
I'd never tried brown-brown before,
but then I'd never killed a man, either.
Oh.
Oh, I didn't do anything, did I?
I didn't do anything, did I?
You didn't do much.
Wait. Are you sick?
SIDA? AIDS?
Ask the white man. He will know.
Sir, will my hand grow back?
Simeon.
Remember, Yuri, take sides.
Simeon!
Don't! He's Andre's.
Fuck Andre!
Fuck Andre!
I'm sorry they don't usually do that.
Let me look it. Maybe I can fix it.
Let me see it. It's the magazine.
Give it to me.
Fuck you!
I started to feel I'd been cursed.
...the curse of invincibility.
Nicki, please, go to your room.
I don't believe you.
Can you prove any of this?
Mr. Orlov goes to a lot of trouble
to make his business look legitimate.
Even to you.
Perhaps especially to you.
I don't expect we'll find anything here today.
So what do you want?
I was hoping that you would help me.
I understand that uh...
your parents died tragically?
The illegal firearms used to murder
your mother and father
were procured from men exactly
like your husband.
I'd like you to leave.
Okay. Gentlemen.
Ava?
Ava, what's wrong?
I can't wear the clothes.
Can't wear the jewelry.
Can't drive the car.
Can't live in this house.
Everything's got blood on it.
Blood on it?
What's the matter with you?
Don't be so melodramatic.
I'm melodramatic.
I'm a failed actress, remember?
I told you, these people, it's political.
They lie. They're liars.
Look at me. They lie to make
themselves look good, okay?
You can't trust them.
It's not just them.
Don't worry. Your family didn't
say anything.
They didn't have to.
I sell people a means to defend
themselves. Ava.
That's all.
Yuri, I see the news. I see those pictures.
The guns are bigger than the boys!
There is nothing illegal
about what I do!
I don't care if it's legal!
It's wrong!
Please, stop.
It makes no difference if I stop.
Someone will take my place the next day.
So let them. We have enough.
It's not about the money.
Then what is it?
I'm good at it.
I feel like all I've done my whole life
is be pretty.
I mean all I've done is be born.
I'm a failed actress, a failed artist.
I'm not much good as a mother.
I'm not even that pretty anymore.
I have failed at everything, Yuri.
But I won't fail as a human being.
My enemies had finally found a weapon
that could hurt me.
For the next six months,
I stopped running guns.
I went legitimate.
This is an untapped market.
I'm talking over five million
cubic meters of timber
in the first year alone.
Over 100 exploitable species.
The oil?
Between you and me, this...
Ten thousand barrels a month?
He must be lying. He's talking!
Listen, there are gas reserves off the
Ivory Coast that OPEC doesn't
even know about.
The phone numbers all check out.
It's all on the level.
No wonder Valentine was confused.
Thank God there are still legal ways
to exploit developing countries.
The only problem with an honest buck
is they're so hard to make.
The margins are too low.
Too many people are doing it.
Still, I'd promised Ava.
Yuri, the President of Liberia
is on his way up.
He's early.
I'll be back in a minute.
What the fuck are you doing here, Andre?
We are here for peace talks at the
United Nations.
So at the same time you thought
you'd drop in on your arms dealer?
Well, I was beginning to wonder
whether that was still your profession.
You know, you're a hard man
to get a hold of all of Sudden.
That is a shame.
My son and I were hoping to do
a little shopping.
While in New York.
You know they're watching you.
Yes, I know they blame me.
They blame me for everything,
those hypocrites.
There're hunt for a witch.
Witch hunt.
Hostilities have escalated.
And they are making it very
difficult for me to re-supply.
That requires a man of your rare ingenuity.
I can't help you, I'm sorry.
I understand.
But you should know this:
Due to our present situation
we are compelled to be unusually generous.
So, see you soon, Lord of War.
You still haven't brought me
the gun of Rambo.
At four and a half months old...
a human fetus has a reptile's tail...
a remnant of our evolution.
Maybe that's what I couldn't escape.
You can fight a lot of enemies and survive,
but if you fight your biology,
you always lose.
You guys aren't waiting to say goodbye?
I'm not leaving for another ten minutes.
Sorry, Nicki has swim practice.
You know, I'm kind of glad you're going.
You've been here so long
you're starting to get on my nerves.
This oil concession should be
wrapped up by Thursday.
I'll be back for the weekend.
We'll go somewhere.
The sea.
That would be fun.
Come on.
Hey. You trust me, right?
She looked me directly in the eye...
the way I've looked in the eyes
of a thousand customs officials...
government bureaucrats and
law enforcement agents.
Yes, I trust you.
And she lied without flinching.
I'll see you, big guy.
Bye Papa.
She learned from the best.
Have a good trip.
That's him.
Where are we going, Mama?
It's a game, honey.
Like hide and seek?
Yes.
Like hide and seek.
I can always sense
when I'm being tailed.
I know what to look for.
But then I'd never been tailed
by the woman I love.
I can put myself in Ava's place.
She might've understood if the combination
was the last four digits of my
social security number...
my birth date, even her birth date,
but not Nicolai's.
My son's birthday unlocked
what the government would
later describe...
...as "a catalogue of carnage."
Nicki, stay right there.
Come on, Nicki.
Come to see how the other half lives?
I miss your borscht.
Mom and Dad say you're clean.
Yeah, you, too.
You went legit, huh?
That's hard to believe.
That's because it's not true.
Only you know.
I'm leaving tonight on a job
I want you to come.
I can't. I've got a girlfriend.
I think she might be the one.
Plus, I'm thinking of opening
my own place.
Maybe this trip will help.
It's good money.
Yuri, I've given my word.
No one has to know.
Tell them we going for a little R and R.
What do you need me for,
all of sudden?
West Africa's fucked up.
More than usual.
I can't trust anybody.
I need you to watch my back.
Brothers in arms.
Monrovia, Liberia - 2001
Yuri! Welcome back.
Welcome both of you.
Welcome to democracy.
Democracy?
What have you been drinking, Andy?
Huh, you have not seen the news.
You know they accuse me of
rigging elections.
But after this, with your Florida and
you Supreme Court of Kangaroos,
Now, the U.S. Must shut up forever.
How do you do this, Yuri?
How do you do this,
when they are watching all of
my airspace?
Where there's a will,
there's a weapon.
Come on, where's my fucking money?
When it is delivered.
It is delivered.
This is not for me.
This is for my neighbors to the west.
The west?
We're going to Sierra Leone.
Oh, yes. And my son Baptiste Junior
will go with you to make the
proper introductions.
We have no trucks.
You will.
As soon as we get the food out of them.
Gun of Rambo.
Mr. Yuri, you're a man of your word.
So where are we going?
RUF - the Freedom Fighters.
Every faction in Africa calls
themselves by the noble names.
Liberation-this Patriotic-that,
Democratic Republic
of-something-or-other.
I guess they can't own up to
what they usually are
Federation of Worse Oppressors
than the Last Bunch of Oppressors.
Often, the most barbaric atrocities occur
when both combatants proclaim
themselves "freedom fighters."
Right, I've got 500 units, brand new
right out of the box,
all as clean as this. What have you got?
God! Oh, Jesus.
God! Oh, Jesus.
Yuri, I need to talk to you.
Not now.
Now.
Excuse me.
What?
We can't do this deal.
The fuck we can't!
What's the matter with you?
Look, over there.
As soon as we hand over the guns
those people are going to die!
It's not our business.
They killed a boy just now
as young as Nicki.
What is the holdup?
There is no holdup.
I'll be right there.
Vitaly, it's what we always know:
We can't control what they do.
No, no, today we can. Today we can.
Yuri, they're right there!
What do you think they'll do to us
if we back out? They'll kill us.
And if we go ahead, what do you
think they'll do to them?
We've got to do something.
Please, for fuck's sake.
It's not our fight.
Please. Brothers in arms.
What is he saying?
It's the deal.
My brother's not happy with the terms.
We'll work it out. It's nothing.
Right? It's nothing.
Yeah. Nothing.
You're right. Yuri, you're right.
God, I've got to get my shit together.
This is not our fight.
Right.
Okay. What's the deal?
and 800 grenades.
I thought it was 1200 grenades.
I was so caught up in the deal...
I never realized
what was going on in Vitaly's head.
I thought it was 1200 grenades.
Confused.
Come to think about it,
maybe I never understood what
was going on in his head.
I beg your pardon.
May I see another stone?
One thing I do understand
for certain...
...is that Vitaly broke the
cardinal rule of gunrunning.
Never pick up a gun and join
the customers.
What are you doing?
Something for Yuri.
Step away. Slow.
No, Vit!
No! Vit!
Only half the guns were gone...
so I was still entitled to half the diamonds.
If I took them, I was lost.
If I left them, I was lost.
The massacre played out exactly
how Vitaly predicted.
But then, a half-dozen
other massacres
happened in Sierra Leone that week.
You can't stop them all.
In my experience,
you can't stop any of them.
They say evil prevails
when good men fail to act.
What they ought to say is,
evil prevails.
I now shared even more in common...
with the leader of that country God
seemed to have forsaken.
We saw something in each other
that neither of us liked.
Or maybe we were just looking
in the mirror.
I paid a Monrovian doctor
twenty dollars
to remove the lead from
Vitaly's body
and write a bogus death certificate.
I should've paid more.
I've smuggled millions of
rounds of ammunition,
and the bullet that lands me in jail...
is found under my dead brother's rib.
Yuri Orlov.
We're with the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, and Firearms.
Let me guess.
This is not about the alcohol or
the tobacco.
Crimean Restaurant.
Papa?
Both my sons are dead.
There are only two tragedies in life.
One is not getting what you want.
The other is getting it.
Is this one of yours?
Jack Valentine finally had
what he wanted.
Curiously, the death certificate says
he died of heart failure.
Falsifying a death certificate?
That's not gonna hold me.
You're right. As usual, you are right.
Have you seen today's paper? Huh?
Fake end-user certificates.
Cut-out companies,
meticulously catalogued.
There is hardly a warlord, dictator,
despot anywhere in the world
that you're a first-name basis with.
It was your wife your trophy wife
that led us to the prize.
It's not her fault.
She's just easier to follow
than you are.
May I?
Yeah, go ahead.
Enjoy it.
What? This.
Tell me I'm everything you despise.
That I'm the personification of evil.
What?
Responsible for the breakdown of
the fabric of society and world order.
I'm a one-man genocide.
Say everything you want to say
to me now.
Because you don't have long.
Are you paying attention?
Or are you delusional?
You have broken every arms
embargo written.
There is enough here to put you away
for consecutive life sentences.
You are going to spend
the next ten years of your life
going from a cell to a courtroom
before you even start
serving your time.
I don't think you fully
appreciate the seriousness...
...of your situation.
My family has disowned me.
My wife and son have left me.
My brother's dead.
Trust me.
I fully appreciate the seriousness
of my situation.
But I promise you,
I won't spend a single second
in a courtroom.
You are delusional.
I like you, Jack.
Well, maybe not,
but I understand you.
Let me tell you what's gonna happen.
This way, you can prepare yourself.
Okay.
Soon there's going to be
a knock on that door
and you will be called outside.
In the hall there will be
a man who outranks you.
First, he'll compliment you on the
fine job you've done
that you're making the world
a safer place
that you're to receive
a commendation and a promotion.
And then he'll tell you that
I am to be released.
You're gonna protest.
You'll probably threaten to resign.
But in the end, I will be released.
The reason I'll be released
is the same reason you think...
I'll be convicted.
I do rub shoulders with some of
the most vile,
sadistic men calling themselves
leaders today.
But some of those men are
the enemies of your enemies.
And while the biggest arms dealer
in the world is your boss...
...the President of the United States,
who ships more merchandise in a day
I do in a year...
sometimes it's embarrassing to have
his fingerprints on the guns.
Sometimes he needs a freelancer like me
to supply forces
he can't be seen supplying.
So... you call me evil,
but unfortunately for you,
I'm a necessary evil.
I would tell you to go to hell.
But I think you're already there.
Pleasure doing business with you.
Most people are happy
just to get out of jail.
I expect to be paid to leave.
I'm not a fool.
I know that just because they
needed me that day
didn't mean they wouldn't make
me a scapegoat the next.
But I was back,
doing what I do best.
Umbrellas to the Sahara?
Sun umbrellas.
You know who's going to
inherit the Earth?
Arms dealers.
Because everyone else
is too busy killing each other.
That's the secret to survival.
Never go to war.
Especially with yourself.
SkyFury