It's my first chance to write about "Bowling for Columbine" [IMDB] since I watched it a few week ago. Michael Moore's new documentary film was a terrific masterpiece, no question about it. Although some scenes might be exaggerated to show the reality, but it's an eye-opening and uplifting movie to open America's mind despite the fact the doors are closed and locked here.

What makes this documentary special is the fact it's produced in America and watched and criticized by the Americans. It's a smart mix of interviews, news footage, archived documents and the cartoon that make you believe what it is trying to say. But what I liked about it was the selection of quotes and what Moore said after filling out the application at the bank: "You think it's a little dangerous handing out guns at a bank?". Yes, the bank was offering a free gun to encourage the people open a new checking account!

The greatest quote of the movie in my opinion, "If guns make the countries safe, why is the America most unsafe country of the world?" could play a very uplifting role to reduce the crime rate in the states. He criticizes the country by putting a montage of America's interventionism when they helped Afghanistan by giving them $245M to install Shah of Iran in 1953.

In another part of the movie Moore talks about the crime rate and why it has obscenely higher crime rate than other countries (more than 11000 a year while next country has less than 1000 as stated in the movie) and the one to blame is certainly the media according to the documentary. He says the main reason behind America's need to arm is fear and it's caused by the killing reports we see everyday on TV or hear on the radio. According to him, we get 600% more murder reports despite the 20% lower crime rate.

I loved the part he said we don't even need a reason to be scared now and showed a footage of George Bush's speech: "America should be on high alert today for some reason which cannot be disclosed now!". And that explains why a country like Canada doesn't have such a high murder rate although there are certainly lots of guns and violent films available there. He shows how the Bush administration is taking advantage of the nation's fear to fulfill its political goals and hide the corporate scandals.

"Bowling for Columbine" was a pretty good and eye opening documentary overall. It is the first documentary film accepted into competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 46 years and the 23rd movie of IMDB's top 250 films at the time I'm writing this (notice the high ranking despite the low number of votes).

[Official Trailer]
[Film Clips]
My favorite: A brief history of America - a short cartoon showing the relation between fear, gun ownership and racism