Weekly Film Analysis - Bowling For Columbine

Bowling for columbine is a political documentary exploring the circumstances of gun law that lead up to the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. In his trade mark provocative fashion, Michael Moore accosts Kmart corporate employees and pleads with them to stop selling bullets, investigate why Canada doesn't have the same excessive gun violence and questions actor Charlton Heston on his support of the NRA, national rifle association.

Bowling for columbine is an extremely low budget production with usually only consisting of about 5 crew members. Although this documentary isn't supposed to be filmed beautifully, the message the director , Michael Moore, wants to get across does. The point he tries to make throughout the documentary is about how absurd and ridiculous gun laws in America are. You can buy hundreds of bullets for a little over $1 in the USA.

He also explores many of the events that lead up to the infamous high school shooting of columbine and how children came into the possession of highly dangerous weapons. At the start of the movie he goes to a bank and opens an account. By opening an account with this bank he receives a free rifle. This emphasises the point of how easy it is to legally obtain weapons in America. At the start of the movie he shows a clip from a Chris Rock stand up comedy act about the price of bullets. In this short section of the film Chris Rock is making jokes about how bullet prices should be raised rather than guns being banned. He says this so that if you really wanted to kill someone you had to save a lot of money for it. This sets a calmer tone for the start of the movie and makes the viewer feel a little more relaxed and less concerned. This tone then gradually eases out throughout the movie but still references comedic shows like south park and also shows a short hilarious cartoon on why Americans need guns. 

Throughout the movie there is a tone of sadness as some of the stories he tells are very depressing and graphic. One of these stories is about how a child shot someone in his class. He was staying with his uncle as his mum had been evicted and was forced to stay somewhere else. As a result of being evicted she was forced to go on a bus to work at a shop from 7-10. Because she wasn't there to look after her son he took a gun to school and shot a girl. Some of the stories like this which are told in the movie are very sad and creates a sense of urgency to ban guns.