Charting Yuri Orlov (Nic Cage)’s life as a gun runner, rising from flogging off AK-47s to tinpot warlords to flogging off attack helicopters to better funded tinpot dictators. If you want to, you could miss the point entirely and decry it for glamorising the SALE OF DEATH, although you’d have to skip the fact that Orlov isn’t particularly likeable, albeit not the puppy-torturing evildoer typical Hollywood mentality would demand of such a character. The progress of his business and evasion of zealous fed Jack Valentine (Ethan Hawke) makes for intriguing viewing, but if you are of the point missing variety then you’ll welcome the absence of subtlety with which the satire disclaimer is brought up in the final act. Top performances all round and script that has the temerity to credit its audience with some semblance of intelligence means that this gets the thumbs up from these quarters.