Grade:  B

Director:  Michael Moore		Released:  October 2002
Writer:  Michael Moore		MPAA Rating:  R
Players:  Michael Moore		Running time:  120 minutes

Ratings System

Very interesting film that should be taken with a grain of salt.  I'm glad that someone like Moore is out there to make these good points and ask these good questions, but he has a tendency to muddle things up with his sensational tactics.  It's been well-documented how some scenes are outright staged, and facts are manipulated or conveniently omitted.  And he hurts his credibility by offering segments that conflict with and contradict each other.

For example, Moore goes to great lengths to show that it is not the availability of guns and ammo that make Americans shoot each other.  He demonstrates how Canadians have easy access to firearms (there are questions as to the truth of this claim, as well) and many Canadians seem to own as many guns as Americans.  Then later in the film, he claims a big victory when K-Mart agrees to stop selling ammunition in their stores.  Forgive me for asking, but what's the point?  This is like proving that cheeseburgers don't make you fat, and then claiming victory anyway when McDonald's stops selling them.

Also, Moore's editing techniques sometimes cloud exactly what his interview subjects are saying.  If you watch closely, you can tell he is cutting away and placing voiceover on top of other video, which could misrepresent what may, or may not, have actually occurred in any given scene.  I have to question whether this film is technically a documentary.  Usually, documentary filmmakers do not make themselves the star of the show, nor do they enter into the process with a political agenda.  Documentarians should present unbiased truth, facts as they occurred in the order they occurred.  I can't pretend to believe that Bowling for Columbine is unbiased or 100% truth.

- crocoPuffs