This is a movie about a salesman, if you're looking for a shoot-em-up war movie look elsewhere. What does Yuri Orlov (Nicholas Cage) sell? He sells conventional arms to anyone who will buy them: assault rifles, grenades, helicopters, APCs, Orlov has them all. He sells weapons to anyone with money, never taking sides and never passing judgement. Orlov marries the girl of his dreams, has a son and everything seems okay but an Interpol agent is after Orlov and soon his life comes apart at the seams. Living his multiple lives eventually catches up with him and with the people closest to him.
Okay, so Interpol doesn't send agents after people to arrest them and there are other typical Hollywood concessions made in order to keep the plot moving. But there is an important message in this film, a message that the Interpol agent delivers when he refers to the assault rifles and grenades that Yuri Orlov sells as "the real weapons of mass destruction", that and the fact that private arms dealers are very likely used by nation states to supply groups which it would be "embarrassing" to be publicly associated with.
As I said, this is not a silly John Wayne-style war movie, this movie addresses serious issues in the real world of international arms dealers, "revolutionary" groups in the Third World and the complicity of major world powers in the whole rotten system. As entertainment it flows well and the acting is very good. I especially liked Nicholas Cage's blase, morally disconnected portrayal of a man who succeeds beyond his wildest dreams and hates himself for it.