In Lord of War, Cage plays Yuri Orlov, a Ukrainian immigrant who discovers that, like doctors and morticians, human beings will always have a need for people who sell guns. Yuri shares with us his whole story, from his first experience with a gun sale through his monumental heights, to his inevitable downfall. As he tells us at the beginning, he doesn’t try and sugar coat the story; he knows he’s not the best representative of the human race. Although Yuri first attempts to break into the legal market of arms dealings, competitors like Simeon Weisz (Ian Holm) make that near impossible, forcing Yuri to resort to black and (Yuri’s favorite) “gray” markets.