Lord of War

There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation.

That's one firearm for every 12 people on the planet.

The only question is,

how do we arm the other 11?

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 congregated 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 worshiped 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 20-odd years of my life,

Little Odessa was to me what it is to the Q train.

The end of the line.

Oh, I did lie about my name.

It's not really Yuri Orlov.

There have been few occasions in the 20th century

when it's been an advantage to be a Jew.

But in the '70s, 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 just didn't know it yet.

Yuri, kouda prava, 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 trayf. • unfit to be eaten • - 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.

Yuri, don't forget to check the specials at the Palace.

Growing up in Little Odessa, murder was an 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 oldest son Yuri.

My contact at synagogue landed me my first Israeli-made Uzi sub machine 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 9mm hollow points, 20, 25-round extendable mags,

rear-flip adjustable sights.

Silencer comes standard. Excellent recoil reduction.

Muzzle jump reduced 40%, 60% 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 as big as a bazooka.

Here, I'd been running away from violence my whole life,

and I should have been running toward 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.

Yeah?

"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 beware of the dog in me.

The dog that 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.

It 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 to aim high.

Vitaly, stop fucking around. I want to talk to you.

You read the newspapers, V?

The 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, you opening a gun shop?

Already more of those in America than McDonald's.

Even with all the gangsters around here, the margins are too low.

- You've worked out the margins? - Sure.

Forget gang wars.

The real money's 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. 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.

That's true.

But maybe doing nothing's better than doing this.

I need you.

Sir, sir,

may I interest you in the shoulder-fired SA-7 surface-to-air missile?

It's 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 $850.

It was the '80s, and the Cold War was far from thawed.

Most of the deals were government to government.

And it was a mostly private club with a lifetime club president.

- That's him. - Who, the big shot?

Simeon Weisz.

Angola, Mozambique, those Exocet missiles in the Falklands.

He was selling guns before there was gunpowder.

I'll be right back.

Mr. Weisz. Mr. Weisz.

It's okay. They're talking.

- May I help? - Yes.

A mutual friend, Eli Kurtzman, from Brighton Beach, import, exports,

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, son.

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.

Curious how you always revert to your native tongue

in moments of extreme anger

and ecstasy.

Oh, you are beautiful.

What's your name again?

The only option for Vitaly and me was under the counter gunrunning.

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? - 5,000.

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 US Army got a piece of the action.

Army salaries were no better in the '80s 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, V. This is small fucking potatoes.

What do you want to do, go more legit?

No, more illegal.

What I would give right now for a plate of cabbage and potatoes.

It's not our fight.

V, 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 even shipped cargo to Afghanistan when they were 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 10 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 US. 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.

Without operations like mine,

it 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 deals so convoluted,