Director: Michael Moore

Summary: A profile of how Gun Culture has swept across America.

Filmmaker and leftist activist Michael Moore asks some serious questions as he probes the depths of America's trigger-happy gun culture in the insightful and amusing documentary, BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE. Guns in America are used to kill an average of more than 11,000 people per year. This death toll is obscenely out of balance with other first world countries, which generally average a total in double digits. Experts and analysts have pointed to America's bloody history as a reason, but how does that explain the lower murder rate in Germany

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An Oscar-winning documentary based around a 1999 massacre at an American High School in Colorado, Bowling for Columbineis filmmaker Michael Moore's take on the culture of firearms violence that is, apparently, peculiar to the USA. Significantly, this is no detective investigation into the psychology and motives of the two students who randomly opened fire on their classmates, killing 12 of them--Moore regards such particulars as practically irrelevant--rather, it's an attempt to counter the moral panic and right-wing diagnoses that followed the massacre, with the likes of rock star Marilyn Manson blamed by some.

Using a mixture of roving interviews, statistics, historical documentary footage, cartoon animation and the set-ups familiar to fans of his TV Nationseries, Moore teases out appalling truths about gun proliferation in America. He's able to obtain a rifle by opening a bank account and shows that the bullets used in the Columbine massacre were still available at KMart--until he confronts their management with victims of the shootings. But it's not just gun proliferation that's the problem. Canada, Moore discovers, is similarly rife with firearms yet has a far lower murder rate. The problem with the US, Moore believes, is an irrational climate of fear that has driven the country to reactionary extremes since the days of the pioneers, persuading citizens that they need to be armed to the teeth.

In a film short on lowlights, the highlight is Moore's confrontation with NRA President Charlton Heston. Moore's deceptively genial, shambling, regular American dude appearance (as well as his NRA membership) wins Heston's confidence and Moore teases from the actor an inadvertently racist slip of the tongue, before turning up the heat, at which point Heston terminates the interview. In this moment, the sort of anger Moore demonstrated at the 2003 Academy Awards ceremony surfaces briefly as he brandishes a picture of a gunshot victim to the retreating Heston. Funny, shrewd, righteous, hard to deny, Bowling for Columbineis uncomfortable and irresistible filmmaking. --David Stubbs

Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Additional Footage - 1. Introduction by Michael Moore - Director, 2. Teacher's guide, 3. Film festival scrapbook: London, Interviews - 1. On Oscar Win, 3. Michael Moore on The Charlie Ross Show, Bonus Short - 1. Return to Littleton Denver six months after BOWL
Year:	2002
Release Date:	October 20, 2003
Runtime:	169 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	M P 291 D
Keywords:	Special, Off, Two, General, Edition, Discs, Bowling, Documentaries, Schedule, Biographies, Columbine
Genre:	Documentaries & Biographies