Bowling For Columbine

Michael Moore’s best film to date (2002) is this comic and grimly entertaining reflection on America’s gun craziness and why we kill one another. It’s closer to speculative editorial than investigative journalism, and the shrewdness of most of its arguments has enraged some reviewers as much as its occasionally questionable methodology. They’ve dismissed the 135-minute polemic as an ego trip and called it anti-American, though Moore proves how American he is every time he conflates the U.S. and the planet, as when he sarcastically includes It’s a Wonderful World on the sound track. He also takes unfair, unfunny swipes at a few hapless working people, most notably an LA cop trying to do his job. But despite these faults, the movie says, with wit and passion, truthful things no other film is saying. (JR)

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