Profits marked in blood

THE theater was almost empty the night I saw “Lord of War,” and the man in front of me was sound asleep and snoring loudly.

One couple left in the middle of the movie and no one sat through the closing credits, as many often do when the film is particularly riveting.

There wasn’t anything blatantly sexy about “Lord,” and none of the kinds of big action scenes that Arnold Schwarzenegger used to play before he was minimized.

Nicolas Cage is a quieter, more thoughtful actor whose nuances are probably over the heads of most of today’s audiences. I don’t think I ever have seen him beat his chest, although I have seen him beat up on himself, as he did in “Leaving Las Vegas.”

I saw “Lord of War” because it just happened to be playing at the time I decided to see a movie. I had read nothing about it and had no idea what it concerned. My wife was out of town and I was filling my time with something to do.

“Lord” is a slow starter, but if you stay with it, you begin to see that Cage’s character, one Yuri Orlov, wants to be the world’s leading arms dealer, a goal that he ultimately achieves. How he gets there is a study in the triumph of greed.

I don’t mean to make the film sound too intellectual or preachy, because it isn’t. It’s a commercial picture, not one of those art house offerings consisting of long, tortured looks and oblique premises.

With his sad eyes and agonized expression, Cage can appear tortured even when he’s smiling, which is maybe the dimension that gives his roles a little something extra, like the emotional pain that exists in most of us, most of the time.

Without blowing the plot, I’ll tell you that Orlov and his brother wander the world bootlegging arms shipments for those most inclined to use them in dirty little wars against each other.

Underlying the theme is the rationale that governments make billions selling all kinds of combat equipment to nations that never ought to have them, so why not let a little guy in for a cut of the blood pie?

That’s exactly what’s going on in today’s world. The U.S., England, France and other peace-preaching nations are even peddling arms to potential enemies. The stuff we’re selling could be the very weaponry used to kill our sons and daughters in Iraq and Afghanistan. By one estimate, we’re wholesaling guns and God knows what else to 16 of 18 countries that harbor terrorist organizations.

If that makes sense to you, as the saying goes, I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you.

I became aware of the amoral attitude of arms dealers while researching a paper on “the merchants of death” for a high school course in world history. They had been so named in World War I when it became apparent that the only ones really profiting from the conflict were those manufacturing and selling the weapons used to do the killing.

Neither Europe nor the world were benefactors. Twenty-one years later, we were at it again, and then again and again and again. But that’s different, I hear you say. Those were officially declared wars with all of their attendant rules and guidelines. In the new world order we tend to ignore the Geneva Conventions when it’s expedient, but only when God and the generals say it’s OK.

“Lord of War” not only raises questions of greed and legitimacy in the sale of arms by individuals like Yuri Orlov but also asks whose conscience ought to bear the weight of those killed as a result of the trade in human destruction.

Independent gunrunners work for profit. No question about it. Money is the aim. Big money. Nations sell arms for the same reason, and also to curry favor, to line up a winning side, to prop up governments amenable to our interests and to gather help on what we’re calling a war on terrorism.

In all cases we subscribe to the notion that the end justifies the means, but one wonders if it actually does.

“Lord of War,” like Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons,” calls attention to the triumph of money over morality in war profiteering. In Miller’s play, the main character, Joe Keller, owns a company that manufactures aircraft engine parts during World War II. He knowingly allows defective parts to slip through, resulting in the deaths of 21 pilots and possibly his own son.

Only as the burden of conscience increases does he acknowledge the notion of a world village and a human family. They were all his sons.

In the grinding amalgamate of war, much is forgiven. While history tends to condemn the obvious, it grants tacit absolution to those smaller iniquities committed in the name of a cause. Someday, however, it will be forced to consider the prevalence of greed as a factor in the amount of human misery that exists today. Profiteering on the graves of the dead will be included in the accounting.

“Lord of War” may not be the best movie ever made, but it makes a point we all ought to be pondering in an age of blood and avarice.

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be reached at al.martinez@latimes.com.