American Gun (2005)

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.

American Gun is a poorly titled film about how hard life is, and how people cope with tragic events. Parts are a take off of the Columbine massacre and details the lives of people involved before and after a similar event. The alcoholic mother and the brother of one of the killers, a cop that was first on the scene of the event and suffers PTSD. The vengeance oriented psychosis of the poorly equipped neighbors of the killer's family and the general public. A gun store owner and his grand daughter who is uncomfortable around guns but forced (somehow) to work at the gun store, a school principle living in a bad part of town working in a troubled school, some school kids that pass through a bad part of town as part of their daily life. The movie fails miserably trying to blame the lunacy of child killers and violent crime on the availability of guns. Violent and troubled people who want to kill are not logical thinkers; they see only the opportunity for violence and take it whether they use a gun, knife, car, or any other weapon. Not given the opportunity to get a gun, these people will inevitably resort to other methods of killing.

Three stories unfold in Aric Avelino's touching and sometimes difficult movie American GUN. Two of them appear to be related to each other even though they occur on opposite sides of the country, the link being shootings at a high school not unlike Columbine (and its aftermath), the link between the three the ever-present, dangerous object that we know of as the gun.Right at the start, snippets of the high school tragedy unfold amidst newsreels, pictures of the students killed in the massacre, and most distressing of all, the image of students fleeing from a study room, caught on a surveillance camera, as later on, the two armed kids enter the picture. Even more anguishing is the fact that even before they make their visible appearance, they can be heard via their deadly approach: the echoing sound of bullets hitting unspeakable targets.The mother of one of the killers, Janet, carries much of the emotional weight of the story since from the start, fingers point at her as the reason that her eldest son committed these murders, for which she has now lost her job, and can barely make amends. She agrees to a paid interview -- seen filtered in and out of the news montage -- only because it can allow her to pay for her younger son's education. The terrible irony is, he will now have to go to the same high school that his older son went to because she can't afford another one.Janet doesn't have any answers as to what lead to her son's rampage. Indeed, with many of these senseless acts, there is no true answer many of the times. She clearly is trying to be a good mother in every way, but is turned into a pariah from her own community who believes evil starts at home and she was half responsible and because she didn't display the correct image of sympathy in her interview, she is now tainted. Marcia Gay Harden portrays Janet as a woman literally coming apart, realizing her younger son is getting into drugs and will not talk to her, wondering if he might also become like his dead brother.The only person she is able to make a connection to is the police officer caught on duty who was unable to do more to save these students from a horrible and meaningless death. Frank (Tony Goldwyn) is carrying an enormous amount of emotional baggage because he was only trying to do his job: things just got totally out of hand. His character eventually meets Janet's, and in an emotional gripping scene, she completely breaks down. Because after all, as she says, "I just want them to know I feel real bad."Midway across the country, Carl (Forrest Whittaker) is trying to make things better for the underprivileged. A principal for an inner city high school that has seen very violent days, he has become totally devoted to tutoring those in need and imparting order when it seems that gun violence amongst the students will reach a major high. However, he is neglecting his own duties at home, which is putting a huge dent in his marriage and is sowing the seeds of his son's shame when forced to carry a bag, then a girl's knapsack, to school. And to top it all, one of his top students carries a gun to school for reasons of his own that are later confirmed in a harrowing moment when the kid faces real danger at the hand of a crazy man with a loaded gun.The more subtle of stories presents Mary Anne (Linda Cardellini), a girl living in Virginia, who seems to be at odd with the family tradition of tending to her father's (Donald Sutherland) store because the store sells none other than guns (to which she is opposed to). An incident where a college friend nearly gets date raped spawns a new interest in Mary Anne to learn how to shoot. One could argue that the message being played is that even when you are surrounded by weapons that can kill, they can also aid in self-defense.American GUN is a visually poetic movie that I thought didn't preach the message in black and white colors. Yes, guns kill -- but humans are the ones who pull the trigger, and we know that. But they also protect, even when anyone would then argue that it would be better to move into a safer area. However, that is not the case for all of us, and people like Jay (Arlen Escarpeta) -- a young man who is the antithesis of a hood and listens to Johnny Cash -- have to resort to measures to ensure they will make it back home in one piece. That in Jay's world, schools are heavily patrolled (which he understands as when in the initial sequence he places his gun in a cubby hole) is part of the system, and the fact he wants to be school principal and is a sensitive young man says pages about the character.American GUN never shows the massacre directly, which heightens the horror and anticipates that one or more of these main characters will come near a bullet at one point in the story. Ardolino in this way establishes tension that slowly builds until it blows up like the scenes of violence that occur later in the movie. But he also achieves to have some risky moments pay off as when Whittaker explains the mechanism of a gun to a young boy at the start of the film, or when his character's son comes across a dead prostitute's mangled body. Even a scene in which Mary Anne's friend tries on the right "fit" for a gun is odd... but conveys the never-ending cycle of man against man.

Overall - 7-10Overall this movie sustains a definite voice, even if the voice is one of greys, not black or white. It is not just roaming all around for 'artistic' reasons.Acting - 8-10The acting is very worth while. Can one compare this acting to such gems as Daniel Day Lewis in Gangs of New York, for example? I believe it's difficult to rate the individual actors & actresses per se, but because this movie depends on all of the individual parts working in tandem, then so must the acting be seen as a synergistic art, instead of one or two outstanding monologues.Screenplay - 10?I don't know how exactly to rate the screenplay. I can't say I thought it was perfect (the teen dialogue seemed like what adults thought how teens talked), but then, since the movie escaped so many traditional mainstream clichés, it begs the question: what is perfect? I can honestly say that the movie kept it's promise to me, to present itself unflinchingly, blemishes and all. And for that, perhaps, is the best we can hope for, because no movie is perfect to everyone.Direction - 10?In this vein, I am using the same ranking as the screenplay, because it is the director's job to bring the screenplay's vision to fruition, and since the director was also a co-writer, the potential for greatness is there, but so is the potential for screwing it all up. I believe the director was very disciplined in keeping focus on the screenplay's intent (his and his co-writer's intent), and not getting carried away in specifics. The truth is, though, that this movie does not aim for the same things most other Hollywood movies aim for (and this movie was made in the LA area, plus one day in Chicago), therefore ranking it in comparison is a little futile.I'll be short and sweet. First off, everyone compares this movie to Crash, but to me it was more like Traffic. Crash was a little more 'preachy' towards right and wrong, IMHO, while American Gun seems to emphasize the sympathetic perspectives from pro- (dangerous neighborhoods) and anit- (criminal shootings) gun stances, much like Traffic aimed not to validate the pro and cons (Crash?), but just explain them for what they are.I think it's amazing how much tension is underlying the general idea of gun control. And this movie is pretty professional in presenting an intimate look into all sides. Some people may say that presenting an issue sans opinion is fruitless (see NPR's Talk of the Nation program called Balance vs. Bias in Journalism from April 17, 2006, esp. minute 18:58-19:30), but I believe that works such as this movie provide a clear-headed approach to very emotional issues. This movie accomplishes this mainly, I believe, by focusing on the emotional undercurrents (most very suttle within the movie), such as economic difficulties, familial tensions, teenage frustrations, all within the context not of some polemic diatribe (read: most Kevin Smith movies, West Wing, (sorry)), but through intense acting. That sums it up, because this movie truly sets itself apart with its professional, committed cast.As an aside, I will mention that I was able to attend a screening of the movie with a Q&A session with the director, Aric Avelino, and he mentioned how this movie was made roughly for 2 million. For those not in the business, this means no one was really paid. It was all done with back-end hopes instead of an up-front salary. Mr. Sutherland, I know, worked for $0.00 (as did I'm sure most all of the expensive talent). The movie was written 5 years ago, Mr. Avelino said, and it took 2 1/2 years to find the financing. After all was said and done, this movie should not have been made. Movies cannot always be made like this, because no one is making money up front, only from profits (and that is a dirty business, but note how one of the production companies is IFC First Take, a video-on-demand distributor, see Crupi, A. "IFC's to Distribute Indie Films Via First Take", Adweek).So in closing, this movie is more than just a bunch of actors, a plot, and some entertainment movie. It represents a way of making movies, of doing business, and ultimately a vision for what is possible when the public is afforded a quality product without the vices of big-money. My only question to Mr. Avelino is, how will things change when you have a 100 million dollar budget? Will you go the way of Phillip Noyce and drop a 6 million dollar paycheck to make a movie of conscious (look for Landmark Theatres' story about Phillip Noyce with Rabbit Proof Fence)? Who knows what success will breed. Let us hope that Mr. Avelino, and all of us, have the strength to live as true as the characters in his movie.