The greatest asset of the film is it’s sense of humour. Too often documentary makers forget the bright side of life and bruise the audience into submission with serious matters. Not so with Moore. My favourite is the metal detector commercial, where a teenage boy unloads all his weapons, starting with a miniscule pistol and ending with a rifle. Moore even manages to do irony at times, which is surprising given that his usual modus operandi is best described by the old maxim ”when you have a hammer, all problems look like nails”. At times Moore also manages to do tragedy well. The much-celebrated What A Wonderful World sequence is truly and well effective – no one in the whole theatre said anything during it.
Even though there are many things in favour of the film, it also has its liabilities and they are rather weighty. Documentaries don’t need to be all-encompassing objective examinations, but rather personal statements about the world. And the flick is rather long. It is clear that time permitting Moore could go on and on on the issue of guns and Americans and that’s part of the problem. There’s no real sense of closure, no real answers to the questions and that is quite problematic, as he spends most of the time asking everybody why Americans have so much gun crime. As my Finnish teacher used to say, don’t use a question as the subject unless you’re able to answer it.
What redeems much of the picture are Moore’s good intentions. Just showing what’s happening doesn’t suffice him; he actually wants to change the world. Admittedly it more often than not results in him harassing the small people, clerks and such, rather than the CEOs, but that is the nature of the PR game. No big bad boss is going to grant an interview to a loose cannon like Moore, especially when they know it ain’t good news he’s bringing. This is exemplified well by the time Moore tries to get an audience from Dick Clark, who couldn’t care less, and so closes the door on Moore and just drives away.
Rating: € € €
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