Andrew Niccol, the visionary writer/director who gave us the best science fiction film of the ‘90s, Gattaca, and penned one of the most arresting and original movies in recent memory, The Truman Show, is a filmmaker of such scope and vision that in an age when most movies barely qualify as acceptable, his are consistently awe-inspiring.

Niccol—quick-witted, candid and, just maybe, brilliant—spent years developing and financing his new Lord of War, the sprawling story of a Little Odessa family of Russian immigrants whose eldest son turns to the international arms game with fabulous success that comes at a steep price. Meticulously structured across the personal, political and social mores of a flawed opportunist with a dream (Nicolas Cage), it’s one challenging film that pulls no punches in indicting its likable anti-hero and the powers that be who ultimately line his wallet.

I caught up with Andrew Niccol to discuss this most complex take on capitalism gone awry, the moral compass that’s perpetually facing south and the economics of a film everyone wants to see, but no one wanted to bankroll.

Lee Shoquist, ReelMovieCritic: You’ve made the most political film of the year.

Andrew Niccol: I don’t consider it so much political. It’s the truth. If it’s political, then it’s because there’s nothing there that’s not factual. There’s nothing partisan about violence. Whether it’s Clinton or Bush, they are both the biggest arms dealers in the world. So violence doesn’t have any party affiliation.

LS: Yuri is able to draw his own moral boundaries.

AN: A big reason I wanted to do the film is to explore that dark side of human nature. Someone who can compartmentalize his life to such a degree that he can sell thousands of real weapons and yet he’ll take a toy gun out of his kid’s toy chest and throw it away. You could say, ‘You’re responsible for thousands of deaths.’ And he could say, ‘I’m responsible for no deaths. It’s just supply and demand. You want a gun, I’ll sell it to you. What you do with it is up to you. I’ve never killed a man.’

LS: Until the gun that’s placed in Yuri’s hand. That’s a major turning point in his life.

AN: You imagine he’s almost never fired a gun. He’s certainly never taken a life. It’s a nightmare for him. Even though you think he’s this immoral character, he doesn’t see himself being part of this world. He arrives at a battle five minutes before it happens or five minutes after. He doesn’t get involved in the actual battle—that’s for other people. He’s a businessman. So he’s not involved in the violence that he is in fact exploiting. So for him that sort of unhinges him.

LS: An issue like this—the global ramifications of supplying arms—most of us see as being in the corner of our eye somewhere. We don’t want to look.

AN: No, we don’t want to look. We are arms dealers. Because we indirectly profit from what our government profits from, we are complicit in. We don’t want to look at it. That’s just too difficult. We don’t want to think about that.

LS: I wonder if Bridget Moynahan’s character, Ava, is complicit at all in any of this, given the comforts she and their son are afforded?

AN: I think because she comes from a tougher life herself, she wants to be taken care of, so she sort of makes a deal with the devil. She doesn’t ask the questions. She says, ‘I don’t want to know.’ In the end, it is not for her. Ultimately she can’t do it. When confronted with it, she has to make a decision.

LS: She has one of the film’s best lines: ‘I don’t care if it’s legal, it’s wrong.’ Does he ever get the sense that it’s wrong?

AN: Yeah, he lives by a different moral code than most of us share. In a way, he’s able to be more successful because he doesn’t have those conflicts of conscience. He’s unencumbered by that. His only allegiance is to money.

LS: That ideology ultimately divides the family.

AN: Right. Even though the lead character is an anti-hero, it’s not a film without a conscience. But the conscience is not wrapped up in Nicolas Cage’s character. It’s wrapped up in his brother and his wife and Ethan Hawke’s character. What I like is he’s a more complex cop than most. He’s not just this do-gooder. He’s also in it for himself; for the glory. So there’ s a vanity to him. That’s why he dresses up in that suit when he has the interrogation—because he thinks, ‘This is my moment. I finally got this guy.’

LS: But he’s outsmarted again.

AN: Yes. This time he’s outsmarted by his own bosses—the guys that bought him the suit.

LS: The bullet trajectory in the opening sequence is a mini-film in itself, isn’t it?

AN: Right. It is actually the film, because when you’re seeing the life span of a bullet, it starts in a factory in the Ukraine and ends up in the head of a child soldier in Africa. That’s actually Nicolas Cage’s character’s journey as well. It starts in the Ukraine, and in a strange way he ends up in the head of a boy in Africa. It was important to me to do it even though I’d run out of money by the time it came to shoot it.

LS: Money—I doubt you got it from America. There must have been a struggle.

AN: Yes, it was. It was all foreign and we never knew from day to day almost whether we’d have the money to shoot that day.

LS: When you were writing did you know it was going to be a hot button?

AN: No, I guess I’m naïve because I’m just writing what occurs to me—a film that I would want to go and see. So I didn’t realize that it would be controversial.

LS: Do you think that Yuri is invincible?

AN: Yes, but he’s hollow. So yes, physically he’s there, but emotionally he’s completely detached, if he has emotions at all.

LS: Yes. He makes an interesting decision at the climax of the film regarding his reaction to something devastating that has happened.

AN: Right. But he makes the pragmatic decision. If you have a grenade in your hand you know you can destroy these weapons, pragmatically, in his mind, he knows it won’t change anything.

LS: Is Yuri as a tragic character?

AN: Sure. Yes. Even though he seems to have prevailed in the end, he’s just a shell of a man. And although throughout the film you think he’s the successful brother and Jared Leto’s character is this flaky loser, the tables are turned.

LS: There’s a very pitch-black idea at the end, because Yuri is no longer doing this of his own free will. A deal has been struck. Without giving away the ending, I suppose it couldn’t have worked out any other way.

AN: Well, that’s the truth. I’m not sure that the devil can make a deal with the devil! But yes, you do get a feeling that there’s a price for his liberty. There was a well-known arms dealer who was supposed to be indicted on arms trafficking charges. He lived in Florida, and one day he somehow got his passport back and had to leave the country because he was needed by the government.

LS: You’ve called this a road movie of sorts, and it certainly hops around the globe. I was fascinated to learn that many of the countries here were replicated in the South African region where you shot. Were those economic decisions?

AN: Yes, partly economic, and geographic as well for the landscape, because it had to stand for thirteen countries. Also, the actors—the extras—you’re dealing with Africa and real African faces. I dealt with this fantastic casting woman to find extras who really looked like they were South African faces, and not West African faces. So she would find me the most fantastic faces with stories in the faces. So South Africa was a very interesting place for me to go to visit.

One of the things that affected me the most was to go to a township where I filmed. It’s the biggest slum and there are a million people there. After awhile I thought there was something strange about this place. What it was is that I was seeing nobody over the age of forty because almost half the population had AIDS. It was just devastating when you think about our lives.

LS: How telling to think that the current administration in the White House advocates terminating contraception to Africa.

AN: You’ll send an M-16, but you won’t send a condom. It’s perverse.