Movie Madness: Lord of War
In my opinion, Lord of War has a couple of different ethical issues in it. The main character in the movie, Yuri Orlov played by Nicolas Cage, sold illegal guns to countries around the world. Yuri did not care who he sold the guns to, he was just worried about making money. Although selling these guns brought Yuri a ton of money, this was unethical because Yuri’s did not care how his actions affected other people (i. e. people getting killed by these illegal guns). The thought of selling illegal guns came from his uncle being the head of the military.
Yuri was not always a law breaker. He once worked at his family’s restaurant, but he wasn’t happy with the amount of money he was making. Even though the family business was making money, Yuri wanted his family to live better then where. Yuri allowed greed to get in the way and he wanted to become rich. If Yuri would have stayed true to his moral ethics, he would have realized that it would have been better for him to stay at the family restaurant and work on some different ways to grow the businesses income. Yuri’s actions were also morally unethical because he was breaking the law.
Another way that Yuri’s decisions affected ethics was regarding business ethics. When Yuri was selling guns to other countries, including countries that were at war with his own country, he was essentially helping to potentially start wars. I also feel that it is morally unethical for Yuri to bring his brother Vitaly into the illegal arms business. If Yuri wanted to be unethical, that is solely his choice; however for him to basically plead with his brother to join him and play on his brother’s sense of brotherly love is unethical.
Yuri used the one thing he was always able to use against Vitaly to get him to do anything “Brothers in arms. ” Yuri was only thinking about money, and was not thinking about the well-being of his brother. This comes back to haunt Yuri, when he is forced to take cocaine from a drug dealer who is buying guns from him. The dealer forces Yuri and Vitaly to test the merchandise, which in turn caused Vitaly to get hooked and addicted to cocaine. Even though Yuri had good intentions of trying to get his brother rich, he hurt Vitaly in the long run.
A good lesson to take away from this movie is that if something worth having; it is worth working hard for. There are no easy ways out. Yuri could have stayed home and worked at his family restaurant, but instead he let his greed get in the way. In regards to Vitaly, Yuri needed to realize that every decision that you make has repercussions and accountability, so you need to make sure you make the right decision. Yuri lied to his wife, and the repercussion of his betrayal was that she turned him in to the Interpol.
