By Woodrow J. Hinton

Nicolas Cage is an arms dealer in writer/director Andrew Niccol's Lord of War.

Make a movie about the world's most successful underground arms trafficker, and you'll need plenty of artillery. Filmmaker Andrew Niccol bought 3,000 guns in addition to storerooms of ammunition and rented Russian planes for his razor-sharp political drama, Lord of War, but sold them back after completing the movie.

In the vicious cycle of world violence, Niccol, star Nicolas Cage and his Lord of War crew became part of the arms equation.

"I never ceased to be amazed by all the available guns," Niccol says, speaking recently from the New York offices of the film's distributor, Lions Gate Films. "It was easier for us to buy real guns for the movie. I became an arms dealer."

Asked if he ever sat down with arms traffickers for research, Niccol -- director of the Hollywood satire Simone and the sci-fi drama Gattaca and screenwriter of The Truman Show -- flatly refuses to answer.

"I don't want to make any dangerous people angry," he says.

There are plenty of movies about drug trafficking. But a movie about arms trafficking, a global business every bit as profitable as the narcotics trade, fulfills Niccol's goals for setting out to make a movie. With Lord of War, he shines a light on a topic people tend to ignore and traces the dark side of human nature.

On-screen and off, the stockpiles of guns used in Lord of War come from munitions factories around the world. Many come from the former Soviet Union, and all of them end up on the streets in hot spots and war zones around the world. Everyone is at risk, including filmmakers hoping to impact people's hearts and minds.

The guns used by Niccol could very well have ended up in the West Bank, where Paradise Now director Hany Abu-Assad recently put his actors, his crew and himself at risk to tell his story of freedom.

Paradise Now, which made its premiere at the 2005 Toronto Film Festival and will come to U.S. cinemas later this year, is set in the West Bank city of Nablus. Two friends, Said (Kais Nashef) and Khaled (Ali Suliman), believe their lives to be pointless until they're asked by rebel leaders to become martyrs for Palestine as suicide bombers in Tel Aviv.

Abu-Assad, a native of Nazareth who currently lives in Amsterdam, returned to the West Bank to make Paradise Now for blatant reasons of authenticity. He never considered shooting anywhere but the West Bank.

But Israeli missiles struck Nablus while filming. Rebels kidnapped his location manager only to release him unharmed two hours later. Abu-Assad and his team became part of the chaos.

Speaking the day following his screening in Toronto, Abu-Assad vows he'll never do it again.

"We were in more danger from the missiles than from gunfire, but I will not do something like this again," he says. "There is a limit to what you can do for your art. I will not sacrifice one person for a movie. I cannot."

Niccol might have enjoyed a Hollywood-level budget to make Lord of War, but he and Abu-Assad shared similar suppliers. They both needed guns for their movies and dealt with the people who have guns to spare.

"We borrowed from the resistance for the shoot and then would bring them back, "Abu-Assad said, leaning back on his hotel room sofa.

While a filmmaker gains added realism from such transactions, it's clear to both directors that a price must be paid -- perhaps, a price of safety. Lord of War was made with real weapons: guns, helicopters and tanks on the airport runways.

"The plane in the film belongs to an arms dealer in Africa," Niccol says. "It was a Russian plane, flying real guns into the Congo. That's why it looks authentic. It crashed one month later."

Asked about the accuracy of the film, Niccol laughs.

"I did not exaggerate anything in the film," he says. "In fact, I downplayed it. Brown Brown, what Cage's character snorts, is real in Africa, but I didn't think anyone would believe that there are actually people snorting a combination of cocaine and gunpowder."

But stories behind the deals are everything for Niccol. These salespeople are charming and glamorous and attractive. You enjoy their company despite the fact that what they do is despicable.

"I love explaining the dark side of human nature," Niccol says. "The idea that a man can sell a crate of guns like vacuum cleaners -- here is someone responsible for 100,000 deaths but his response is, 'I don't pull the triggers.' " ©