Lord of War
8.5/10. Saw this Saturday afternoon at the Alhambra in Bern.
An intelligent and darkly-comic adventure, with terrific performances and a deftly-crafted script, Lord of War was one of last year's best movies and deserved to find an audience. But $24 million was all it could muster in North America. (By comparison, in 1999 its tonal cousin Three Kings managed a domestic gross of $60 million.)
As smart and serious as it is, there's nothing about Lord of War that wouldn't appeal to a broad audience. So what went wrong? I'd like to blame the distributor's marketing department. But in this case the distributor was Lions Gate, which has the best marketers in the business. So maybe releasing the movie in September was a mistake, after a summer bursting with disappointing A-list fare. But then how does one explain the success of Flightplan, which came out a week later?
Sometimes it's impossible to figure out. Some movies just don’t find an audience, no matter how good they are.
posted by Ian @ 2:27 PM
4 Comments:
Actually, I think in this case you can blame a) the marketing and by extension b) its over-exposed star. Around the same time as I began to see previews for Lord of War, I was seeing them for The Weatherman, which I wanted to be sure never to see.
Then, the Lord of War preview didn't do its job. I had no idea the movie was so acidly smart, based on real events, and both serious and funny. All I got was something like "Uri has a hot wife. And he's a closet arms dealer. What will happen when she finds out?" Cut to Cage looking hangdog. Cue laughtrack.
Terrible. This movie is really, really good. It's getting 4 stars outta 5 at Netflix.
Thanks for that, Michael.
It's hard for me to talk about marketing, as I don't really know how any given movie is sold over there. So it's good to hear from someone on the scene.
Also, I'm glad you enjoyed the movie, especially since I believe you saw it based on my recommendation.
Now, about Caché...
I'm working on it! Netflix doesn't have it yet.
*sigh*
I'm sure Caché will play fine on your TV, but it's too bad you missed seeing it in a theater.
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