An arms dealer confronts the morality of his work as he is being chased by an INTERPOL Agent.
This movie charts the rise and fall of Yuri Orlov, from his early days in the early 1980s in Little Odessa, selling guns to mobsters in his local neighborhood, through to his ascension through the decade of excess and indulgence into the early 1990s, where he forms a business partnership with an African warlord and his psychotic son. This movie also charts his relationship through the years with his younger brother, his marriage to a famous model, his relentless pursuit by a determined INTERPOL Agent and his inner demons that sway between his drive for success and the immorality of what he does.—[email protected]
In the 1980s in Little Odessa, the Ukrainian immigrant Yuri Orlov decides to change his economical life and becomes an arm dealer with his brother Vitaly Orlov. His business of gunrunner supplying illegal weapons in disturbed areas of the planet increases with the end of the Cold War, and Yuri bribes a Russian General to sell most of his arsenal. Meanwhile, he becomes a millionaire and uses his money to seduce the beautiful Ava Fontaine and they get married, and have a son. INTERPOL Agent Jack Valentine chases Yuri trying to put him in jail, but in the end, he understands that Yuri is a necessary evil for the interest of his nation.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The film begins with a voice-over introduction by Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage), a Ukrainian-American gunrunner: Over 550 million firearms worldwide mean one firearm per twelve people on the planet; he wonders how to arm the other eleven. Opening credits are set to the Buffalo Springfield song "For What It's Worth" and depict the life of a 7.62×39mm bullet from construction in a Soviet Union weapons factory, to being shipped across the world to an African war-zone, loaded into the magazine of an AK-47, and fired into the head of a child soldier.
In the early 1980s, Yuri is visiting a Brighton Beach restaurant, where a Russian mobster kills two would-be assassins. He is inspired to go into the arms trade, comparing the constant need for weapons to the similar human need for food. At his father's synagogue, he contacts an Israeli to obtain an illegal Uzi. After completing the first sale, Yuri convinces his brother Vitaly (Jared Leto) to become his partner, and they leave their jobs at the family restaurant behind.
Yuri's first big break comes in the 1982 Lebanon War, when he sells guns to all sides of the conflict, despite witnessing war crimes and atrocities. As Yuri becomes more successful in the war's aftermath, his business comes to the attention of Interpol, and in particular idealistic agent Jack Valentine (Ethan Hawke). Valentine is after glory rather than money, making it impossible for Yuri to bribe him as he does other government agents within Interpol and elsewhere in 1989.
During a sale in Colombia, a drug lord pays with six kilos of cocaine instead of cash, and shoots Yuri with one of his own pistols when the two argue; Yuri had wanted cash instead of drugs. Yuri relents, later finding the sale of the cocaine paid better than money would have. After sampling their profits, Vitaly becomes heavily addicted and eventually burns through an entire kilo. After several months, Yuri checks Vitaly into rehab, and continues alone. He lures childhood crush Ava Fontaine (Bridget Moynahan) to a false photo shoot and subsequently marries her. They later have a son, Nikolai (Nicky).
Yuri's second big break is the dissolution of the Soviet Union. After Mikhail Gorbachev resigns on Christmas Day 1991, Yuri flies to Ukraine and illegally buys tanks and weapons through his uncle, a former Soviet General. Expansion to Africa leads to Andre Baptiste Sr. (Eamonn Walker), a ruthless dictator waging a never-ending civil war in Liberia. During one flight into Africa, Yuri's cargo plane is intercepted and forced to land by a fighter jet commandeered by Jack Valentine and Interpol. He escapes arrest by landing outside of the nearby city, and by simply handing out the cargo to locals, he ensures no weapons are on the plane by the time Valentine arrives.
Surveillance of Yuri and his activities continues at his home in the United States, however. Unable to charge Yuri, Valentine tells Ava he is an arms dealer, prompting her to confront him and demand he stop his illegal business. Yuri agrees but is soon enticed back into arms trading by Andre Baptiste Sr., who offers him even greater payments in return for his exceptional skills as an arms dealer.
Yuri soon goes to complete a sale in Africa, where a militia force allied with Andre Baptiste Sr. is visibly preparing to destroy a refugee camp. When Vitaly sees the militia hack an escaping woman and child to death with a machete, he pleads with Yuri to walk away. Yuri refuses: if he backs out, the militia will simply kill the Orlov brothers along with the refugees. Taking matters into his own hands, Vitaly steals a pair of grenades and destroys one of the two trucks carrying the weapons being sold. Before he reaches the other truck, RUF soldiers shoot him. Yuri approaches his dying brother and restores a grenade pin and tosses the inactivated grenade to one of the killers responsible. The diamond payment is halved for the remaining weapons.
At home, Ava follows Yuri to his secret shipping container of supplies. She leaves with her son Nick, and Yuri's parents disown him after learning the truth. When the U.S. Customs finds a bullet in Vitaly's corpse, Valentine arrests Yuri, who predicts, correctly, that a knock at the door will signal his release as a "necessary evil" who distributes weapons so major governments can deny involvement. Despite his losses, Yuri returns to arms dealing. Yuri remarks that it's what he does best, and that arms dealers are most likely to inherit the world one day "because everyone else is too busy killing each other." His final advice to the viewer is, "Never go to war, especially with yourself."
An onscreen postscript states that private dealers conduct less business than the five largest arms exporters - the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, France, and China - who are the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
