Bowling for Columbine (2002)
Directed by Michael Moore.
Rated R.
Grade: A-
"From my cold, dead hand!"
Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore's latest liberal treatise on America's social ills is likely to rouse those who share his points of view and anger and provoke those who do not. One thing the film again makes abundantly clear is that Moore, the relentless persecutor of corporate greed we met in Roger & Me and The Big One has no interest whatsoever in being journalistic; his films are biased, one-sided, and inspiringly impassioned. He isn't always fair, but he's always interesting, and his aim here is to make us ask questions, not to provide answers and quick-fix solutions.
Of course, I'm myself biased towards Moore's politics, so my comments should be taken with a mammoth grain of salt. Even if you hate him, it's difficult to deny the amount of talent involved in this incredibly engaging documentary that strings together several monumental topics of discussion into a jarring, powerful collection of interviews, archive footage and Moore's traditional quixotism.
His focus is the provocative question that graces Bowling for Columbine's rather self-aggrandizing poster: "Are we a nation of gun nuts or are we just nuts?" The exploration of that rhetorical query is framed by the factoid that before going on their infamous rampage, Columbine shooters Erik Harris and Dylan Klebold went to their local bowling alley and bowled a few games. The fact that two teenagers can leave a bowling alley, pick up two automatics and kill more than a dozen people at the high school is a more than satisfactory jumping point for Moore's delve into America's gun mystery.
Calling it a mystery is an understatement. It is understandable why Great Britain, with their strict firearm control laws and no tolerance punishments for shooting violence has a gun murder rate in the low triple digits. Ditto, Japan. But how is it that Canada, just across the river from Moore's hometown of Flint, Michigan, a nation perhaps more in love with guns than even the US, has a murder rate more than a thousand times smaller than ours? Is it violence in movies and video games? No, Moore points out; Canadian teenagers await the latest Hollywood shoot-'em-up just as eagerly as those south of the border. Or is it, as Charlton Heston suggests late in the film, an "ethnic thing"?
It's a terrific question, and Moore doesn't purport to be able to answer it. Donning his customary baggy jeans and polo shirt, the man travels North America looking for the answer, interviewing celebrities like South Park's Matt Stone, Terry Nichols' acquitted brother, and an extremely reluctant Dick Clark, on issues ranging from gun control, to welfare-to-work programs, to violence and fear in the news media. His bias is obvious, but his facts are interesting, and his sense of humor as potent as ever.
There's a moving sequence in which Moore takes a pair of Columbine survivors, one in a wheelchair, the other barely able to walk, to K-Mart headquarters to try to return the K-Mart bullets still embedded in their bodies. As usual, he challenges various executives to stop selling ammunition in their stores, and is absolutely flabbergasted when the VP of communications tells him that K-Mart has decided to phase out the sale of bullets across the nation.
Moore's reaction to this almost made me cry; for all of the obviously staged moments in Bowling for Columbine, his shock and gratitude at the delivery of this news struck me as absolutely genuine. Never for a moment, in fact, did I doubt the sincerity of this project; Moore is a celebrity hound, with no shame in promoting his agenda on-screen, but his movies work because we believe him.
They're also, as I mentioned, tremendously entertaining little ditties, and Bowling for Columbine is no exception. Moore is a deadpan comedian as well as an activist, and his interviews with unassuming subjects often turn into hysterical, if humiliating debacles (James Nichols: "There are some psychos out there."). There are times when he just isn't fair -- his closing interview with Charlton Heston is particularly painful -- but how great to (again) see a movie that actually takes a stand.