Rating: 
Summary: Exploring gun violence in America. Some hard questions.
Review: There is a unique kind of gun violence in America. We all know that. So does Michael Moore, the confrontational documentary filmmaker who's not afraid to take on some sacred cows. He goes after his prey with unrelenting forcefulness. His [tool], however, is a microphone and a film crew. And his prey are often unwitting accomplices to the concepts he wants to introduce. He'll use film clips and newsreel footage and music as well as interviews. And he sure knows how to play with his audience's emotions to make his point. In this case it's an exploration of gun violence in America.We see Moore opening a bank account in Michigan and receiving a gun as a premium. We see newsreel footage of the Columbine tragedy and meet two young survivors who still have bullets in their bodies. We see an interview with an unsuspecting Charlton Heston. The film keeps probing and travels from incident to incident in a seemingly random way. And yet it keeps escalating in intensity. In spite of its somber subject, the film is ultimately entertaining. I laughed out loud at the comic, Chris Rock, who suggested that if bullets cost [a fortune] apiece, there would be no innocent bystanders. I wept real tears at the film clip of the World Trade Center collapsing. And I'm doing some deep thinking about the statistics. Yes, it's true that America has a violent past. But it's certainly not more violent than the pasts of Germany or France or England, where it's difficult to obtain guns and where there are just a handful gun crimes each year. But then there is Canada, which also has only a small amount of gun crimes. And, in Canada, gun possession is as common as in the United States. So what kinds of conclusion can we draw? I can't think of any easy answers. And neither can Moore. And this is the strength of this film. It asks questions. It doesn't give answers. I give this film a high recommendation. Don't miss it. It will give you something to think about. And you'll want to talk about it too.
Rating:
Summary: Should be required viewing for everyone.
Review: You won't find an answer when the house lights come up, but maybe if enough people see this film, we'll finally start talking about guns enough to keep senseless things from happening. Uncompromising in it's focus, you will be uncomfortable while viewing this film. You'll also laugh too. Moore takes several formats ranging from stock footage, historical data, and parody to weave this web, and once you're stuck in it there is no avoiding what he brings to your attention. At the same time, this film really picks at (white) America's psyche in general and leaves you wondering how on earth our country has managed to make it this far. People may scoff at him, but Marilyn Manson makes one of the best points in the movie. You might really enjoy the works of Charlton Heston, but you'll never look at him the same way again after hearing what comes out of his unprepared mouth. You may not agree with everything this movie touches on; of course, it's hard to be subjective when you're looking into a mirror. If enough people see this film, maybe we can finally start making choices for the better.
Rating:
Summary: It's a strike.
Review: Best documentary I've seen in years, and certainly equal to Moore's classic *Roger and Me*. *Bowling for Columbine* is about any number of things: America's love of the gun (and I'll be precise here, even if Moore wasn't: the HANDgun); America's apparently unending racism; America's violent tendencies which doubtless have their beginnings in our violent past; America's crippling, absurd FEAR. It's the last point that seems to be at the heart of this film. Moore's smartest bomb, in my view, is the one he lobs at the horrible news programs of the USA's media -- in particular, those detestable "all-news" channels like MSNBC, Fox, and CNN. (But the "local" news shows prove not to be any saner.) Running 24 hours a day, these organizations draw on collective fear to fill up all that air-time. Moore indicates that this nonstop fear-mongering is having a deleterious effect on our national psyche. While this is obviously a theory, it also seems to be merely correct. But the best thing about *Bowling for Columbine* is Michael Moore himself. The sloppy, ball-capped muckraker emerges as the hero of his own movie, if only because those whom he interviews -- the loony brother of Terry Nichols, members of the Michigan Militia, a shockingly brusque Dick Clark, a dim-witted and racist Charlton Heston -- come out so badly in their confrontations with him. Rather more heroic are the sufferers of gun violence, like the pair of teenage survivors from the Columbine tragedy. Moore enlists these kids -- one barely walking, the other chair-bound -- to "return" the bullets that are still embedded in their bodies to K-Mart, where the bullets had been originally purchased. Moore and the kids, after dealing with a PR flack or two, shame the K-Mart corporation into "phasing out" gun and ammunition sales. Call Moore a nutty lefty; he's certainly that. He's also a man who gets results. He doesn't just talk about the changing the world; he actually does it. Bravo! The directorial style of the film, by the way, reflects the man himself: unadorned and unpretentious. It was so nice to see a movie released this year without any digital cinematography.
Rating:
Summary: Emotions across the board.
Review: I laughed, then I shed a tear, then I laughed again, then... I think this is Moore's most powerful film. I'm not even sure if I can call it a satire, or a commentary. Like his other films, and television series, he splices clips of "all walks of life." In this case, he talks about guns, about social responsibility, about violence, about murder, about war, and on and on. Important, though, he doesn't make your editorial decisions for you. No, I won't claim that Moore was "objective." But even his treatment of Charleton Heston was "fair," i.e., Heston, while showing up at pro-gun rallies after the Littleton, Colorado affair, and after a 6 year old shot another one in Moore's hometown of Flint, MI, granted Moore an "interview" at his estate. When Moore asked him if he would have spoken at such a rally had he known of the shooting, Heston answered honestly, "I don't know; I can't say." Then he left Moore, who was trying to get him to acknowledge the picture of the 6 year old who was murdered, in the dark. What I particularly liked about the film was (1) Moore's talking with Barry Glassner, author of "The Culture of Fear" (available from Amazon.com) and (2) the commentaries on the media. The media never fail to be at a "newsworthy" event but they invariably miss the point, such as the poverty of the mother of the 6 year old killer who was working several jobs and couldn't pay rent. Also, there was amusing reference to those making a bundle off of that "culture of fear." The part at which I laughed hardest was Moore's clips of his hypothetical crime series ala "Cops" in which white color criminals were arrested. The producer of the real TV series said, "It wouldn't get the ratings." And I'm sure he's right.
My only objection to a little of the film was that it made reference to race when it has little if any relevance to the issue at hand. That's distracting, but is a minor weakness of a film. Aside from that, everyone should see it. It presents lots of useful quesions but, again, doesn't answer them for you. Well done, Michael.
Rating: 
Summary: Political Agitation As Art
Review: Charlton Heston went to court in a futile attempt to keep director Michael Moore from including footage of an "ambush" interview in "Bowling For Columbine." Moore is the scruffy self-styled populist writer with bad hair under a permanent Detroit Tigers baseball cap. During the interview, Heston becomes so unhinged that he walks away, leaving Moore and his bewildered camera crew sitting in the pool house the Heston estate. Moses has left the building ...and it turns out the that the avuncular chairman of the NRA is an inarticulate old coot without his teleprompter. It is moments like this that make "Bowling For Columbine" compelling viewing. Moore takes his agit-prop artistry straight from Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals". Alinsky, the notorious grass roots organizer from the Back of the Yards neighborhood of Chicago, advises radicals to personalize their political targets and embarass them into submission. Moore may look like he just fell off a barstool in a Flint Michigan honky tonk, but he is a articulate street fighter in this exploration of the root cause of violence in America. Moore wisely chooses not to argue with the gun toting members of the Michigan militia. Instead, Moore uses the guise of a "puff interview" to allow militia members to reveal their lunacy in ungaurded moments. Moore stumbles a bit in his analysis, attributing violence in American culture to nervous white people who buy guns to fend off scary minorities... but even as he shoots from the hip, Moore seldom misses his target.
Rating:
Summary: Flawed but hilarious
Review: Michael Moore's latest is engaging cinema, to say the least. His sarcastic, ultra-liberal approach to "the awful truths" of America have never been so entertaining. It's a cross between Candid Camera and 60 Minutes. This time, he confronts the gun-culture of America. He highlights the fact that Charleton Heston and his merry band of pro-gun extremists held a rally near Columbine shortly after the tragedy there. Then, he and his ilk held ANOTHER gun-rally shortly after another child/gun tragedy in Flint, MI where a 6-year old child shot and killed a 6-year old classmate (Heston claims in the final interview of the film that he didn't know this had just happened when he appeared in Flint). Heston really shines when he claims that the reason for all of the violence in America is due to "mixed ethnicity". This statement is almost as jaw-dropping as Bob Eubanks' anti-semetic joke in Moore's debut, "Roger & Me", unless of course, you are a bigot. Also interviewed, and similarly pathetic, is James Nichols, brother of Terry Nichols and friend of Timothy McVeigh, both convicted in the Oklahoma City bombing. James, of course, is pro-gun, but doesn't believe the right to bear arms includes nuclear weapons ("There are a lot of nuts out there," he claims, to the howling delight of the audience). Marilyn Manson pops up also, commenting on how he was also blamed for Columbine because the idiots that killed at Columbine listened to his music. Another highlight is when Michael invites two Columbine survivors to join him at the K-mart headquarters in Troy, MI, to "return the bullets" that are still embedded in their flesh from the Columbine attack (reportedly purchased from the local K-mart). This stunt results in K-mart's announcement that they will be pulling ammunition off of their shelves, to Moore's own astonishment. Although there is a lot of serious business in the movie, it is packaged with enough laugh-out-loud footage to make it bearable, even entertaining, even in light of the constant barrage of violence played out on nightly newscasts. The only major downside is Moore's lack of thoroughness in certain areas. For instance, he claims Canada has as many guns as we do in America, and therefore the death-by-gun rate should be the same (of course Canada has FAR fewer gun-related deaths than the U.S.). However, Canada bans handgun ownership. This is not pointed out. Also, he tries to blame Michigan's "Welfare to Work" program for the classroom shooting of the 6-year old child, his claim being that because the mother of the shooter had to work far from home (via bussing), she had to leave her children in the care of her brother, who owned the gun that the child found and brought to school. This is a stretch, as when he also blames General Motors for this tragedy, inferring that it was because GM ruined Flint, MI that this tragedy occured. These tangents, although interesting, often seem somewhat scattershot. There are other flaws as well, and many will depend on your viewpoint, but no matter what you think about Michael Moore or gun control, this movie is funny, thought-provoking and will stick with you awhile.
Rating:
Summary: Wow
Review: I was truly surprised by this movie. I've seen Moore's other films, and this one is, I think, easily his best. It's not often these days when a movie makes you really think long after you exit the theatre. I don't care if you're a bed-wetting lefty or a gun-packing, bible thumping conservative: get yourself to the theatre and see this movie. You won't regret it. It doesn't pander to a particular political agenda quite the way his last two films did, and does an admirable job of trying to address the issue of gun violence in the USA from all sides. This is an absolutely hilarious, absorbing and fascinating film. Others have already expressed all of this quite eloquently, so I thought I'd scrutinize Moore's use of Canada in the film as a sort of comparison with which to measure America's gun-related societal ills: I was proud to see that during the scenes in Canada, my neighborhood was the one that Moore was sent to when he asked someone to direct him to the Canadian equivalent of a ghetto/slum (Ha ha ha!) And while some Canadians may say (and have expressed on this very page) that Moore exaggerated our easy-going, don't-lock-the-doors mentality and relative safety, I can honestly say as a lifelong resident of downtown Toronto that it isn't quite as misleading and Pollyanna a portrayal as some might think. Keep in mind that Canadians are modest about flaunting their good qualities and that we too suffer, though on a much smaller scale than Americans, from the constant barrage of fear-inspired American media which creates unwarranted and irrational fear about our surroundings (we get COPS, America's Most Wanted et all) What Moore didn't have time mention was that this "slum" that he was sent to is, even more so than many other Toronto neighborhoods, extremely diverse, culturally, racially, economically (it was a planned mixed-income urban community created in the 1970s by wacky leftist politicians) and even though most of us live in public housing and about 50% are classified as low (or no) income, we have one of the lowest crime rates in a city of low crime rates. And yes, I know people here who don't lock their doors (my mom never did when I was growing up). When an American friend of the family visited us here a few years ago, in one of our conversations over dinner he let it slip that A) he could not believe how kids in our neighborhood were allowed to play freely on the streets (and no one can remember anyone ever getting kidnapped or murdered or anything of the sort) and B) he was surprised at the huge number of multiracial families here (meaning black/white in this case, of course). That he should choose to remark on these two points is fairly revealing about American society, I think, and ties into the issues Moore was trying to tackle in his film. So Michael Moore's portrayal of Canada is not as far from the truth as one might imagine. I could have taken Mr. Moore to a rougher, poorer neighborhood nearby to ours, but even there one cannot ignore the sense of community and the considerable lack of racial segregation. Unfortunately, many Torontonians have not spent time in such neighborhoods and are increasingly buying into the American stereotypes of ghettos and applying them to neighborhoods here that, outwardly at least, seem to fit the mold. These are obviously not the Canadians that Moore interviewed for the film. Having spent a lot of time in the USA, I can say that many (though by no means all or most) Canadians, not entirely unlike Americans, are unaware of how good they have it. There is a funny true tale about Toronto that illustrates our general attitudes around guns and gun-violence: in the early 90s, an American "expert" on violence in schools was asked - presumably by an overworked, overwrought white school principal who makes his home in the burbs (and I say that based in my experience with so many of them) - to come do a speech at what was considered one of Toronto's toughest inner-city high schools. During a particularly dramatic moment in the speech, the speaker asked the students to simply raise their hands if they knew or knew of any teenager who had a gun in his or her possession. The students looked at each other but no one raised their hands. In a matter of seconds, the whole auditorium had erupted in laughter. (Canadians for you, eh?) Like those kids, I never knew anyone who owned a firearm in my inner-city high school (in rural Canadian areas gun ownership is much more common). Getting back on topic -- while it's true that Moore offers no easy solution for America's gun violence woes, there is, I think, a prevailing, simple but too often ignored moral to the film: we should all try harder to "love thy neighbor" and gosh, maybe even TRUST thy neighbor in time.
Rating:
Summary: Everyone Should See This Film!
Review: This is a wonderful movie. Everyone should see it. Moore does a wonderful job of making you think, and laugh. He explores the issue of violence in America. He explores how/if it relates to the media, music, movies, gun control, poverty, violent history, etc. There were moments when I was laughing out loud, and felt like crying. This movie will make you want to go out and do something to help make the world better. Even if you hate this movie, it will still make you think. Everyone should see it.
Rating:
Summary: A Movie Rarity: It Makes You Think
Review: Now I don't agree with a lot of Michael Moore's politics and his methods are about as subtle as a brick through a window, but this movie raises some serious questions not just about gun control, but about America as a whole. As the promo material says: "Are we a nation of gun nuts, or are we just nuts?"<... It was a great movie, go see it. And thanks to Moore for making us Canadians look sane.
Rating:
Summary: Fearing Instant Karma
Review: This film wasn't playing in the town where I live so I drove three hours to a city where I could see it. It was certainly worth the trip. Michael Moore's gift for telling it like it is, abundantly evident in this film, was my incentive for traveling that distance and he did not let me down. This two hour documentary film focuses primarily on the peculiar culture of fear that our government and our media have fostered that makes Americans feel the need to keep everything under constant vigilance, secured by locks, keys, and cameras, armed and at the ready for defense. It focuses on our culture of mistrust and violence. It shows how painfully shut off from each other we are, as well as how little responsibility we take for the well-being of each other. It shows a shocking level of ignorance, the ugly stepsister of fear. It is done in Moore's characteristic satirical style and so it is very funny, even entertaining in spots, but it also has heaping measures of his bold, straight-forward questioning of the status quo. He takes on the NRA as well as several corporate and government programs. He talks with gun thieves, the Michigan Militia, Terry Nichols' brother James, Charleton Heston, and for the voice of reason, Marilyn Manson. He includes some very shattering footage of the legacy of guns we have turned upon our international neighbors, sometimes ousting freely elected leaders to set up dictators and murderers, as well as siting statistics in terms of body count that these tactics have created. We squirm in our seats as chilling footage of the legacy of fear trickles hideously down to our children. We grimace with shame and disgust at the small-minded, ignorant, and painfully narrow viewpoints of our own elected officials, law enforcement, media, and corporate people. Numerous comparisons are made of other countries around the world with similar backgrounds to ours who do not have thousands and thousands of killings from guns every single year. We stand alone as gun-toting killers. There are some bright spots that show how ordinary citizens can change this climate of fear and senseless, irrational defensiveness that were encouraging.
This film is asking us to stop and take a look with common sense and recognize that Chicken Little might have it wrong...maybe the sky is not falling...maybe we don't need to be armed to the teeth. As with all of Moore's books and films, regardless of your own political viewpoint, you are bound to come away from this film with plenty of food for thought. You will be asked to pull your head up out of the sand for a couple of hours and take a good look at yourself, our leaders, your future and the future of our country. Michael Moore is a patriot and this film challenges us to do our own patriotic duty and weigh the facts. See it and think.
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