American Gun (2005)

This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

ridiculous rating

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Whenever Hollywood decides to "teach America what it should think" the result is a lousy movie. And this waste of time is really a lousy movie. Why sacrifice an hour and a half of your life being lectured to by a film, when you could just read a Handgun Control, Inc. leaflet and get just as much misinformation? But at least you can see this one coming a mile away. Sometimes Hollywood's elite moralizers sneak the message in without letting on that it's a "message movie." I really hate it when that happens. "The Adjustment Bureau" (2011), I think it was, ended with an endless lecture about personal choice and personal responsibility, taking a merely goofy movie right down the drain.I can't recommend this one AT ALL. I'd give it a "0" but IMDb will only let me rate it a 1.

Another hard-hitting and thought-provoking drama. Director Aric Avelino examines guns from the perspective of four separate stories: Marcia Gay Hardin as the mother of an Oregon teenager who shot up his school, Columbine-like, and faces guilt and blame and scorn from neighbors, and worry about her other son, who is now the same age as the other brother when he performed his murderous act and suicide; an inner city school principal (excellently played by Forest Whitaker, who I was pleased to see won an Oscar last week for his role as Idi Amin in LAST KING OF Scotland) trying to stay on top of the school's anti-gun policy, with Arlen Escarpeta as an A-student carrying for his mom and family who feels he needs a gun for protection while walking to/from school; Tony Goldwyn as the cop who first arrived on scene at the Oregon school shooting and who faces community/media criticism for delayed response (again, very much based on Columbine); and Linda Cardellini who shines in a very convincing performance as a west coast girl displaced to a Virginia college who is working in her granddad's (Donald Sutherland) gun shot. All of the performances, in fact, are striking and through them the picture really has an emotional impact. The film, without comment, portrays these differing views of gun ownership, gun violence, school shootings, guilt, blame, etc., very nicely filmed and beautifully portrayed, its vignettes and its style leaving the viewer to establish their own viewpoint and opinions. The film keeps its personal viewpoint quiet, instead simply portraying a few aspects of American life impacted by the consequences of guns. Like American HISTORY X, I found this to be a provoking and stimulating drama about reality, choices, consequences, and inevitability, peopled by honest and real characters, superbly portrayed and beautifully composed.

Some people on this site were comparing this movie to crash. At best this is a poor made after school movie. The movie never takes off, it drags, it wanders, it bores you to death. The only thing this movie made me want to do is buy a gun to put myself out of my misery. I watched it for free and I feel like I've been cheated. I should have been happy when it finally ended, but I was only left wondering why I had wasted the last hour of my life watching this movie. I noticed that there were about 20 songs in the credits but I must have been so numb with boredom that I can't recall a single line being played. Each song must have been uniquely unremarkable. The cherry on the top of this little masterpiece was Donald Sutherlands character, he easily could have been replaced by a rambling old man with senility taken off your local public transportation line.

For starters, In regards to MICDI and claiming that American Gun was made before Crash is wrong ; Crash had already started filming in late 2003 and finished in early 2004. While American Gun didn't start filming until the summer of 2004. Just to clarify American Gun is a film about the lives and 8 people and how each of them are affected in different ways by guns in America. This movie is almost exactly like Crash with the exception of a little Bowling for Columbine mixed in. I did not enjoy this movie, it focuses too much on one type of class of people. It does not show how other classes of society are affected by guns in America. But I guess thats what you get with a movie that is just a little over and hour and thirty minutes long. Another thing i thought about this movie is it didn't have enough good actors (with the exception of Donald Sutherland and Forest Whitaker). So if you want a movie that shows emotion and depth the whole subject of the movie, I suggest that you rent Crash. And THEN see American Gun, you will notice a big difference.