12 Movies You Can Stop Watching After The Opening Scene

Of all the films listed here, there’s no faulting this one for ambition.

Moving from bleak black comedy to a more sombre and dramatic depiction of the very real and very brutal arms trade, Lord of War sees star Nicholas Cage play an amoral gun merchant who grows a conscience at the exact worst moment. The film manages to take a few effective satirical swipes at the industry but, coming out in the years after America’s invasion of Iraq, the flick was too unfocused to hit hard and was largely forgotten soon after its 2005 release.

What was not so soon forgotten was the movie’s insane opening sequence, an immersive sequence which borrows from David O. Russell’s earlier Three Kings to show us the life cycle of a bullet from creation to its eventual, er, execution, as it were. It’s a thrilling and ultimately harrowing sequence which marries impressive effects and a devastating denouement better than anything else in the surrounding film.