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Bowling for Columbine review
:. Director: Michael Moore
:. Genre: Documentary
:. Running Time: 2:00
:. Year: 2002
:. Country: USA
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Warning, Hot! The cantor of anti-globalization, author of the corrosive The Big One, returns full force with this documentary about gun control in the U.S. With this new and inspired opus, Michael Moore establishes himself as the itching powder of a schizophrenic and increasingly confused American society, especially in the wake of September 11th.
As a moralist (and sometimes as a moralizer, which is the only limit of this film) Michael Moore draws up an uncompromising portrait of his contemporaries, haunted by a desire for security that pushes them to be surrounded by weapons. Incidentally, it is in the US that there is the greatest number of deaths resulting from firearms. The country is also known for another specialty: mass murders that are often perpetrated by very young people.
The main thread of this documentary is the Columbine massacre where two students opened fire on fellow students before turning the weapons against themselves, thus plunging the entire country into stupefaction and horror. Michael Moore takes this opportunity to deliver a reflection on violence in America.
In a breathtaking opening, he reminds us that United States armed the terrorists they are fighting today. Then, he wonders about the reasons of this violence. Is it rock music (we meet singer Marilyn Manson), violent films or history? No, it's simply fear. Moore proceeds in a scientific way throughout the film, i.e. he puts forward hypotheses and then tries to check them by collecting various testimonies. A highlight is the interview of the brother of one of the terrorists of the Oklahoma City bombing who used his farm as a lab to create homemade bombs.
While it's easy to laugh about Moore's provocations and the nonsense he exposes (for example, the bank that proposes a rifle as a gift for opening an account!), the tone of the documentary is indignant. We'll remember the sequence where survivors of the Columbine massacre, accompanied by Moore, ask a department store not to sell any more ammunition. After being politely kicked out, Moore returns with the press and obtains, against all odds, the promise of a total withdrawal of ammunition from the store, within three months. An upsetting victory which contrasts with the violence of the scenes of the Columbine massacre shown on the campus security cameras. Moore who daringly took a lifetime NRA membership, also confronts confused organization president, Charlton Heston.
A film to watch urgently, as a testimony to the state of chaos in the U.S.
Sandrine Marques
Translated into English by Anji Milanovic
 Documentary Reviews: 1998 - 2011
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