The Real Lord of Wars

Do not expect it to be a regular action packed, "one man army " against the entire world kinda movie.. In fact, this is not a movie where you are going to come out feeling good at all.. In fact, it makes you think abt the realities or war and consequences of fire arms in the wrong hands ..or rather any hand .

Lord of War, tracks the life of the Ukraninan gun running entrepreneur(who later becomes a superpower in his own rights), Yuri Orlov, played by Nicolas Cage. The entire movie is set in the perspective of Yuri Orlov.. and the opening line " one in 12 people around the world has a gun.. the question is.. how do we arm the other 11?" gives the movie a dark and sadistic feel..

The movie is set at the end of the cold war and there is no more soviet union. Yuri the son of a refugee Ukranian couple living in the states, aspires to become rich and successful and after failed business ventures, decides to capitalize on the massive number of various fire arms left behind in Ukrain by warring nations.. (why did they leave behind the guns? coz it costs more to transport them back then to actually make new ones.) He literally buys the abandonned guns by the kilos at ridiculous prices and ships them off to another country where there is a conflict or a war going on.. and in the process gives us a crash course on econonmics, demand and supply. He keeps the customs at bay with bribes of cash and for those who cant be bribed he resorts to clever tactics (i dun wanna spoil the entire show by revealing it out)..

The funny thing is that Yuri had never handled a gun prior to entering the business..his first sale , a UZI was closed after a 15 min read thru the manual and he pulled it off like as if he had been in the business for years. He has only one protocol, never to get shot with your own merchandise.. which makes no sense to me.. anyway the movie progresses thru the decades and Yuri has established himself as a reliable supplier to the every major warlord, dictator and private armies.. while every one prays for wars and conflicts to end.. its quite funny to see him kneeling infront of the tube and desperately pray for new ones to begin.

Everything is smooth sailing till conscience catches up with him after his brother dies during one of his dealings went bad. He tries to go legitimate for the sake of his wife and son but the past catches up with him and eventually his family leaves him.. and having nothing to lose.. Yuri returns to what he does best.. supplying guns. He now has nothing to fear having the contacts of political big wigs and corrupt govt. officials. the movie ends there.. but its starts you thinking.. Yuri practically opens up your eyes to issues we never knew existed..

In an action movie, we think its cool when the hero shoots down an entire army, but in this movie i almost puked when the nigerian warlords went on a killing spree immediately after makin payment to Yuri. Most of the victims are malnutritioned kids and women. Just when i started to hate this character i realised his purpose is to shed the light on the real lords of war. While private gun runners continue to thrive on fire arms sales...the worlds three biggest gun runners are none other then the U.S , Russia and France... no point screwin the scavengers..

Case of the contraband burgers...

After keeping it a secret for so long.. finally i am compelled to tell my story.. (actually Brinjals brought out my hilariously embarassing episode in the carceral checkpoint room).. anyway picking up from where brinjals left off...

i volunteered to carry all the burgers so that the burden of the rest could be lightened. prior to this.. my colleague and i were having a conversation(just for the fun of it.. not actually planning anythin) abt the possibilities of smuggling contraband goods across the border.. we discussed some methods (again for the fun of it) of actually concealing the goods. at which point, my colleague mentioned that sometimes just openly smuggling the goods will work.. our disussions ended when counter attendent signalled me to come over. After they X-rayed my pouch and the bag of burgers.. a scrawny Police NSF came over to me and told me that i had to follow him to the office..I knew it.. i just knew it.. somehow i had this feeling that i was gonna pay a visit to the check room.. it was one of those gutt feelings.. and it came true.. so i obliged and followed the scrawny Police NSF to the room, along the way tryin to smile and jokingly signal as if i had been hand cuffed to my confused buddies and kepo( not that i blame them) onlookers...

[inside the check room]

there was a major, staff Sgt and the Scrawny Police NSF. the Staff Sgt came over to me. "hmm wat do u have inside there.." i simply replied.."----- burgers" .. after which he went on to give this sinister laughter.. somethin that went like ..." hm hm hm hm.. hm hm. ha ha ha. ha hahaha.. mu haha ha ha ha ha... MUHAHAHAHHAHHA!" try it.. will freak u out. then he told me that burgers were not allowed(which means my burgers have mutated into contraband goods) thru the check point and he asked me to write down my particulars and sign the book.. i have never had my particulars noted down because of mere burgers.. not onli have my burgers become contraband but i have become a smuggler.. cool.. i was told then and there that AVA had not permitted the entry of chickens.. me, being a law abiding citizen simply said.. "is it? i dint know.. can u close one eye this one time and i wont do it again", to which he responded with a re-run of his sinister laughter. the funny part was that while he was readin me the S.O.P for contraband goods (which is to dispose the product then and there..) he was neatly tying up the plastic bag and placed them on the desk.. My gutt feeling was like " yup! we all know where thats going..bon apetite fellas!"... In a desperate effort to salvage what eva i can.. i quickly asked him if could at least bring back the BEEF burgers.. i knew i was getting zilch when he went like " i am sorry sir.. we have already tied up the bag and a guy is coming to collect it". i walked out in agony.. i can imgaine him radio-ing the others " guys we got dinner!".. lookin on the bright side, at least we all had bloody good laugh on the way back.

food for thought: if the chicken is not allowed.. then kindly put up a sign.. we got posters banning almost anythin we can think of..