Bowling for Columbine

Through the scathing documentary Bowling for Columbine Michael Moore seeks to find the reasons why teenage gun violence is rampant in American society.

Moore’s bluntness denounces a guilty and coward America insistently blaming the entertainment industry for inspiring school shootings like that perpetrated by Harris and Klebold at Columbine High School when few miles away from the crime area just happens to be located Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest weapons manufacturer.

Michael Moore’s flabbergasting courage is displayed throughout the whole documentary especially when he brings two Columbine survivors to the Michigan headquarters of K-Mart (the ammunition used to shoot them was purchased at a K-Mart store), and asks if the boys can return the bullets that are still in their bodies.

Unstoppable are the film’s riveting scenes like that when the PR of a weapons company blissfully unaware of the irony stands before ballistic missiles while going on about ‘anger management classes’

Along the documentary, Moore surprisingly discovers that there are more guns per household in Canada than in the United States, yet the death toll, even when adjusted to consider the unequal populations, is much lower, helping him to conclude that the ready availability of firearms in the United States is not the primary reason to explain guns crimes.

After conducting various interviews and hopping around and out of the country, Moore suggests that fear, enhanced by the media’s obsession with death and violent crime, may be the root cause of America’s death-by-gun problem. A societal ill that is perpetuated by the evening news and reality TV shows like “Cops”.

The film features a number of fascinating interviews, including that with Columbine alumnist (and co-creator of “South Park”) Matt Stone and goth rocker Marilyn Manson (who was blamed in some circles for the Columbine tragedy).

Regardless of how dubious Moore’s documentary tactics may be, Bowling for Columbine is powerful, thought-provoking, informational and even hilarious. The movie offers something for everyone. Even those who disagree with Michael Moore’s politics will find themselves thinking during and after the film.