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Michael Moore knows that he usually preaches to the converted. Conservatives aren't any more likely to throw down their guns after watching "Bowling for Columbine" than the CEO of General Motors was likely to reopen factories after seeing Moore's big-business bashing "Roger and Me." But this time, the diehard documentarian not only introduces a wild card of doubt into his stacked deck of skewed facts and ambush interviews, he actually gets something accomplished by working within the system. A large corporation actually responds in a positive way to his questioning, topping off a movie that satisfies a widespread hunger for more robust debate over access to firearms. The title of this alternately hilarious and heartbreaking film is an allusion to the 1999 murders at a suburban Denver high school. The two shooters spent their last morning on earth at a bowling alley. A few hours later, they opened fire on dozens of their classmates before ultimately killing themselves. Moore poses what seems like a facetious question: If pundits are going to blame the violent video games and heavy-metal music that the two boys loved, why not also blame bowling? Moore assaults us with surveillance-video footage of the Columbine murders, then launches into a tongue-in-cheek critique of American gun culture. A former teen marksman who remains a member of the National Rifle Association, Moore opens an account at a bank that offers free guns and buys bullets at a barber shop. He takes target practice with the Michigan Militia and interviews ignoramus militiaman James McNichol, whose brother Terry was convicted for the Oklahoma City bombing. He pointedly compares the United States to civilized Canada, where hunting rifles are common yet used with restraint. He wheels a paralyzed survivor of the Columbine shootings into the Kmart corporate headquarters, where they plead for the company to end ammunition sales. While Moore's ostensible subject matter is guns, he uses it as a springboard for a free-wheeling examination of America's foreign policy and human-rights record, and this is where the film soars. He enlists the "South Park" guys for an animated history of both the Ku Klux Klan and the NRA (which were founded in same year). He gets doddering NRA president Charlton Heston to say that American street violence is the fault of "race mixing." Moore has a different thesis. Over archival footage of far-flung genocide, Moore asks how we can forgive our country for the murderous overthrow of elected governments from Chile to Iran yet express shock when affluent children resort to guns to resolve their disputes. His point is that all these things - conspicuous consumption, intractable racism and military misadventures - are connected. Although the film is a departure for the admittedly perplexed Moore in that it eschews easy answers, his reasoning resonates. Whether it will resonate with the minority that actually controls things in this democracy is a question that even a courageous filmmaker like Michael Moore knows better than to ask. "Bowling for Columbine"
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