Nicholas Cage plays a Russian with a Nicholas-Cage-a-like American accent. He deals arms (guns not limbs) and gets very rich from doing so. Every now and then he sends his ADHD-afflicted brother (who was a junkie in Requiem for a Dream) to rehab to get him off drugs; at no point does he ask for his money back because they keep failing, he's that rich! He marries a nice looking model who is happy to not ask him what he does for a job as long as he continues to buy her nice things.
Nikolai Cage then starts to become very rich and powerful when Gorbachev calls an end to the cold war and he is able to sell his uncle's tanks (mobile weaponry not things to keep fish in). This upsets Bilbo Baggins who wanted the tanks for his own means. Ethan Hawke plays an FBI agent who keeps popping every half hour and tells Nikolai he won't get away with his scams this time, even though he keeps continuing to do so.
In the end he does get caught out when Ethan follows the model who follows Nik to his hidden secret place where he keeps all the evidence needed to incriminate himself. Does he get sent to prison? Well I'm not going to spoil it for you.
The best bit of the film is the opening sequence which tracks a bullet from the factory to the forehead of a kid soldier. At no point does Nicholas do that thing where he raises his fingers to his temples, as he seems to have done in all his other films; if you've going to see it for that, don't bother.
The director also seemed to like casting kids with missing limbs to play the part of kids with their limbs missing.
However the film is quite thought provoking, especially towards the end.
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