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BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE Send This Review to a Friend
Michael Moore is busy being provocative again with his devastating exploration and indictment of America's fascination with guns and the efforts of the gun lobby. "Bowling for Columbine" was a major force at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival, where Moore made an appearance and got plenty of press attention.
Moore doesn't make documentaries as such. He films personal essays around situations that he exposes and sometimes manipulates. As usual, he manages to inject humor in making his points.
But there is sadness as well as shock and humor as he probes the toll that guns take. Moore is also something of a guerilla filmmaker, as when he gets an interview with Charlton Heston and poses lacerating questions linking Heston's support for guns to a little girl who was shot. It is a cheap ploy, although Heston asked for it when he spoke at a meeting apparently timed to take the sting out of local outrage about weapons. All's fair in Moore's use of film as an exposé essay. He makes no pretense at being a documentary filmmaker in the customary sense of the word.
What makes his latest especially interesting is its timing, although there are always gun incidents playing out in the United States. Moore amusingly looks at the differences between the U.S. and Canada, pointing out that Canada also is big on guns but low on violence. He also stresses that Canada is less wracked by fear of crime, and amusingly conducts an experiment going from house to house to show how many Canadians don't bother to lock their doors. The segment is particularly funny for a lock-conscious New Yorker.
But mainly Moore is on the attack against the hypocrisy of trying to defend the right to carry guns that have nothing to do with hunting but are used to kill people. "Bowling for Columbine" is a smart, disturbing film, loose in its tactics, but powerful in its accusations. A United Artists/Alliance Atlantis release.
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