I can hear my grad school screenwriting professor now: “too much voiceover means you don’t know how to tell your story.” Excessive narration suffocates this beautifully filmed movie about gun runners, which also suffers from middling character development; by the end of the film, you really don’t care about the characters. Eamonn Walker shines as a Charles Taylor-inspired Liberian president/dictator, while Nicolas Cage and Jared Leto struggle with unimpressive dialogue such as “I’m the f–ked up family member.” The brilliantly-conceived title screens deserve a better film, which is clumsily heavy-handed in its condemnation of state-sanctioned arms dealing. C-.
Apr 24, 2006