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.

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.

... about the politics of gun control. This film is more about what happens in life when things get complicated. The metaphor is guns, but the real issue is humanity. The issue could be about the environment, sex, or a f---in' alien ship. What matters most is what happens to characters we care about.The character I actually care about the most is Jane, played by Marcia Gay Harden. I've seen her in lesser roles, such as in "Miller's Crossing;" "Meet John Doe" (with Anthony Hopkins and Brad Pitt), and "Pollock," for which she won an Oscar. I never been a fan until seeing her in this film, as Jane, a mother working two shifts in a factory so her son doesn't have to go to the same school that, a few years earlier, her other son and his friend destroyed in a killing spree. From the moment you see a cross around her chest line, and peer into pain filled eyes, you know she is devastated. Not by any law or control, but by the hand dealt her by life. Her son's decision to kill is never explained, nor does it have to be. She and her living son, played by "Joan of Arc's" Chris Marquette (who hits the right notes as a semi-innocent kid also facing the same aftermath)have to face the fact that he must go back to the same school because the money is running out. Jane even (arguably) prostitutes herself in a news story about the shooting, stirring up her family pain, and the pain of the patrolman who could have stopped the shooting but didn't ... and also secretly lives down the pain.Now I don't have anything against gun use in film (I reviewed John Woo's "The Killer", for Christ sake.) But in life, you're going to feel some sort of pain whether your protected or not. And watch how Jane, her son, and the policeman feel their pain, both in dialog an in silence, and you'll see some great acting.In the same year he won an Oscar for "The Last King of Scotland," Forest Whitaker also played a different authority figure, this one with a soul but little options.Whitaker's high school prinicipal Carter is anti-gun -- within the school, of course -- but is so devoted to helping the students, that he literally ignores his family for his job. Look at the man during the film: he constantly tries to fix an overhead fixture in the rundown school, yet has forgets his son in his office to reprimand some kids. He does this because he came into an inner-city from the Midwest with his family to make a difference for the kids today. He's not perfect: he ignores his family for his job; is unable to explain the murder of a hooker who died on the playground to his young son because he, maybe in his own heart, can't find the words to say it, slams a gun-toting student againist the wall, and is forced to expel another student, one I believe he admires for his scholastic work, because the student his the gun underneath the school. In the end of the film, he is acknowledged for his good deeds and also realizes they are not enough.Jay, another fine actor named Arlen Escaperta, -- watch for his name in other roles, he's good -- only did that because he needs the gun for self-defense in his job as a gas attendant late at night where, in one scene, he gets shot at through the glass windows. He survives, and is not a white/black (his color isn't important as his role's character is) typical inner city city youth who hates and wants to shoot back at eyerything. He just wants to live and get a better life.From Jane's suburbs and Carter's inner city to Donald Sutherland and his granddaughter's South, (their storyline receives the less attention, sadly, even though she questions her uneasiness about guns after witnessing a rape of a friend in college, their are no easy answers, and not aconventional Hollywood ending in the film, but I have some questions for YOU:If the title of the film was The Fog, would you be pro or anti-fog? If it was American Rabbit, would you be pro or anti-Rabbit? Seriously, this the Internet Movie Database, not Current Affairs 101. Hey, you can say what you like about this review, but at least it talked about acting and plot. You can believe what you want to, this is America. But could you at least stick to talking about the film instead of personalizing this issue? What I saw was a film, and I gave the best damn review of it I could, so if you're going to give me an unuseful comment button, go ahead. I did my job. Now, I don't give a damn.