Rent Bowling for Columbine (2002)

A scarily prescient film which rings more true today than when it was released 21 years ago - Bowling for Columbine review by TB

Back in 2002, most people who knew of Michael Moore had heard of him because of Roger & Me, a tiny documentary which went on to huge success & became a sleeper hit. After a few other documentaries, Moore then turned his satirical eye on one of the biggest hot-button issues in the US: guns. It would in many ways have been impossible for him not to, as a polemicist and someone who always tackled difficult subjects. And whilst it had been 3 years since the Columbine High School massacre, which this film uses as its main subject & returns to at various points, its impact was still being felt whilst nothing was being seriously done to prevent these types of tragedies happening again.

But rather than do a documentary which was deliberately provocative to antagonise people, Moore comes at it from a very different direction: he tries to make it as humorous as he can, within the limits of the subject matter, to try to reach the members of the audience who are usually not receptive to anyone not totally agreeing with their opinion. One of the first things Moore talked about & was at pains to put across was that when he was younger, he liked & also shot guns. He was also a member of the NRA whilst making the film. So, he had a knowledge of that side of the debate, rather than someone who wasn’t American coming in like a bulldozer.

The film looks at various elements of how guns have influenced the US, but also how this was getting so out of control and each year more & more people were being either seriously maimed or killed. Again, I am writing this review in 2023 and as of the 30th June, there have been 340 mass shooting, defined as 4 or more people being killed. That is a jaw-dropping statistic for halfway through the year. But for a massive part of the US, they will not in any way admit that having the volume of guns in America in any way contributes to this.

There are some fantastic interviews, including with Marilyn Manson, who was wrongly blamed for being a primary influence on the shooters & who says more in 2 minutes about the disaffected people in the world today than any politician has said in most of their careers. There is also a brief but good interview with Matt Stone of South Park fame, who grew up in Littleton & went to Columbine High School.

But there are some valid criticisms of how Moore edits & shoots his films which has to be mentioned as well. And nowhere is this more prevalent than his interview with Charlton Heston towards the end, having at various points showed how Heston behaved within his role as a representative of the NRA. Heston was in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease & the whole interview was so uncomfortable and, in many ways, exploitative. It was clear the confusion that Heston had & in the end his walking out of the interview actually did more damage to Moore than to him.

But this is powerful and essential filmmaking, which takes a difficult subject & forces us as the audience to confront it. It’s just a shame that all these years later, things are in no way how Moore and many other hoped they would be.