Nicolas Cage's Lord Of War Used Real Guns Instead Of Props For A Bizarre Reason

The 2005 Andrew Niccol crime drama "Lord of War" is an unsettling film about the morally corrupt world of arms dealing that plays it a little fast and loose with both its plot and facts, but one element of the movie is shockingly realistic: the guns.

In "Lord of War," Nicolas Cage stars as Yuri Orlov, an arms dealer who deals with seedy underworld types and international governments alike, and the movie follows him as he goes about a major deal buying and offloading Kalashnikov rifles, transporting them from Ukraine to Liberia and Sierra Leone, with all of the complications that can arise along the way. The rifles in the movie aren't prop rifles, but real ones, according to Niccol, who told The New York Daily News (via The New Zealand Herald) that the decision wasn't about accuracy, but instead came down to being more cost-efficient. That's right, real AK-47s were cheaper to buy than fake ones, so that's what the production team on "Lord of War" went with. It's kind of wild that a movie about arms dealers ended up getting the movie makers buying hundreds of actual weapons themselves, but moreso that it was just a matter of money. 

Look, we're used to Nicolas Cage going method, and real guns could have easily been a part of that, but it's bonkers to imagine the real thing actually being cheaper. We doubt they'll use real guns if they ever actually make that proposed sequel, but just how did that all go down?

While shooting in the Czech Republic, likely for the sequences set in Ukraine/the former Soviet Union, where Yuri buys the massive shipment of guns, it was simply cheaper to buy real Kalashnikovs than buy or make fake ones, as Niccol explained: 

"In a way, my film is a how-to about becoming an arms dealer. During the making of it, I needed guns in the Czech Republic, and it was cheaper to use real guns than replicas. I bought 3000 Kalashnikovs and then sold them back at a loss. I wouldn't make a very good arms dealer."

Selling the guns back to the original dealer at a loss is definitely not the kind of thing that makes one a good arms dealer, but it's also a little morally questionable. Then again, Yuri himself is pretty morally ambiguous (at best!), and maybe it's just a little case of life imitating art. "Lord of War" isn't Nicolas Cage's most famous movie, but it is one with a stellar (and somewhat nuanced) performance from him, and it's worth checking out. Not only that, but Ethan Hawke is fantastic as the agent hunting him down, and even though Jared Leto is in it, things go even worse for him than they did in "Fight Club." Now that's cinema.