The Notorious Mr. Bout
The home-movie autobiography of the world's most famous arms dealer — assembled from the hundreds of hours of video Viktor Bout shot himself, and the DEA surveillance that brought him down.
The home-movie autobiography of the world's most famous arms dealer — assembled from the hundreds of hours of video Viktor Bout shot himself, and the DEA surveillance that brought him down.
Viktor Bout was a Russian entrepreneur, a war profiteer, an aviation magnate, an arms smuggler — and, strangest of all, an amateur filmmaker. Until three days before his 2008 arrest on charges of conspiring to kill Americans, Bout kept the camera running, documenting a life spent in the gray areas of international law. Dubbed the "merchant of death" and portrayed by Nicolas Cage in Lord of War, Bout can justifiably be called the world's most famous arms dealer.
With unprecedented access to Bout's home movies and to DEA surveillance material gathered during the sting operation to bring him down, The Notorious Mr. Bout is a portrait of a life much mythologized but little understood — a rags-to-riches-to-prison memoir that opens a window onto a world rarely seen on screen.
"An unexpectedly absorbing watch that delves into the human side of the story, not just the evil deeds and sensationalisation."
"A grotesquely comic — and in its way even sympathetic — portrait of a man whose guilt in enabling war crimes is crystal-clear to everyone save himself."
The Hollywood Reporter · Sundance 2014
"A lively mix of talking heads, public footage and ample private footage, brightened by clever graphics and an inspired score."
"A picaresque across the epoch-defining events of the last 25 years — the collapse of the Soviet Union, the deregulation of trade, post-9/11 surveillance — told through the home video of the man at the center of it."
Sundance Film Festival 2014 · World Cinema Doc Competition