Film Review of Bowling for Columbine
Year: 2002 Reviewer: Chris Docker
How on earth does a Micheal Moore documentary about hand guns in America rake in such incredible audiences and critical acclaim? I had to go to the cinema myself to find out. I did, I came, I saw, I was impressed. It starts rather offhandedly ("It was a normal day . . . the milkman delivered the milk, people went to work, and the President bombed another Asian country whose name he couldn't pronounce . . . ") but, as part of the backdrop to his investigation into guns and gun control, Michael Moore puts together an impressive array of facts about American involvement in world terror, its funding of characters and regimes it later attacks, its quick resort to violence internationally, and various other unpalatable facts that a quarter of the world (Europe) knows but tends to ignore and another sector of the world (Asia, Middle East, South and Central America) simmers with frustration over. They are facts that the average American is totally oblivious of or else attributes to malicious lies. That such a documentary should be made by an American, a very humble one it seems, is a testament to the goodness also inherent in American people.
The facts and figures on guns, that suggest America easily outstrips all other countries for homicide by use of guns poses some interesting dilemmas - and ones which are portrayed better than they are answered. The film's initial theory is that the availability of handguns is the main cause - but then finds there are just as many guns in Canada but Canadians don't use them to shoot each other. It then looks briefly at the 'historical and cultural legacy of violence' (a theory favoured by a number of Americans interviewed) but in that America can hardly compete with Nazi Germany, the British Empire of Japan in various wars. It settles on a 'culture of fear' which it suggests (with some conviction) sets America apart from other similar developed countries. This part of the movie is somewhat less convincing - it doesn't, for instance, look at religious fundamentalism which sets America apart from most other developed countries but puts it into a similar category to some of its Middle East 'opponents'. But the suggestion that people who are 'so paranoid' should not be allowed ready access to guns appears to strike a note of truth.
South Park poked political satire for those who understood the 'other' face of America - Michael Moore does it for real. Columbine, by the way, is the name of the school where a young kid went crazy with a gun, shooting his classmates. It is also near the site of the biggest factory of weapons of mass destruction in the world.
Rating: 8/10
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