Go figure "conventional wisdom." Phone Booth -- with Colin Farrell penned in a phone booth by a sniper -- has had its release postponed because audiences presumably don't want to see anything on the subject while a real-life sniper is loose.
Meanwhile, Michael Moore's latest mocku/documentary Bowling For Columbine -- about America's gun culture and insane murder rate -- has been clearly bolstered by these same events, doing turnaway business in limited U.S. release.
And if the insanity of the Eastern seaboard being held in thrall of a lunatic with a rifle gets people pondering the issues in this film, then God does work in mysterious ways.
Before conservatives get into a knot, be advised that in some ways this is the least Moore-ish of the former Mother Jones editor's films (although it still leans heavily on his trademark ambush interviews, which are beginning to wear thin).
There are few shibboleths about what must be done to set things right in a nation that annually murders many times as many of its own people as were killed on Sept. 11. Bowling For Columbine is more a series of questions that knocks down easy answers (Moore is a National Rifle Association Member and holder of a teen sharpshooter trophy).
Is it availability of guns? No, Moore comes North to Canada to reveal our secret, that we have almost as many guns per capita as Americans, yet ours are rarely used to kill people. Is it violent entertainment? Nope, he travels the world to find peaceful people watching gore and playing the vilest games.
Is it the media, fostering a climate of fear? Well, he kind of leans this way, applying this template to U.S. foreign policy and the events of Sept. 11 in what seems like a tacked-on thesis.
(Moore's love of Canada is such that Bowling For Columbine here should result in a national blush. Sometimes he overstates things, but the part where he wanders around Toronto opening doors and marvelling at the fact they're unlocked is actually true. At home, most Torontonians still think nothing of leaving doors unlocked -- which astounds many Americans).
The sprawling documentary opens with the Columbine High shootings, with the fact that the gunkids attended their phys-ed bowling lesson that morning, with the fingering of death-rocker Marilyn Manson as the inspiration for the massacre (there's a backstage interview with Manson), and with Charlton Heston's insistence on holding a gun rally in Columbine.
Indeed, for a while, Heston seemed determined to give his "my cold dead hands" speech wherever a massacre occurred, a chilling policy that infuriated Moore to the extent that he sets up one of his ambushes at the befuddled Heston's home (subsequent to the filming, it was revealed that Heston has incipient Alzheimer's). There are also interviews with Dick Clark (it would take too long to explain), the loonytunes brother of one of the Oklahoma City bombers and various militia types.
Subjective it may be. But if, as the old saying goes, the role of the journalist is to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable," then in Bowling For Columbine, Moore fulfils the requirements beyond all previous measure.
(This film is rated AA)
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