meggiet
"American Gun" is an amazing, quiet movie that packs so much into an hour and 37 minutes. It's about the lives, ones of desperation and defeat, that different people around the nation live with every day, ones affected by guns.Marcia Gay Harden plays a single mother whose son participated in a shooting at his high school and was killed. Even though that was years ago, she lives trapped in that time, that single moment that shaped her life and her younger son's life forever. For anyone who heard about the tragedy at Columbine, saw the footage and were outraged, for anyone who thought, "What were the parents doing? Why didn't they stop those children from taking guns into that school?" this movie shows the other side. And will make you think.Linda Cardellini is a college student who works in her grandfather's (played by Donald Sutherland) gun shop. She's uncomfortable around him, around the shop, but family obligation keep there day after day.Arlen Escarpeta plays Jay, an African-American high school student who carries a gun to school. But he's also a straight A student and takes care of his mother and younger siblings.At the heart of this movie is Carter (Forest Whitaker), a principal at Jay's high school, a man who is there to make a difference. He talks to those kids, he tries to make them understand there's more to life than guns and gangs. He's so dedicated that sometimes he neglects his own family to help others.There are no easy stereotypes in this movie, no pat answers. No one is simply one thing. The main characters are real, sometimes unrelentingly horrible, sometimes kind to each other. Whether you are pro or anti-gun, this movie will make you question what you believe and give you something to think about.
magpieny
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.
rockdoc590
The film looks at the impact of guns and their violence in 3 settings- through the impact on the mother (Marcia Gay Harden) and brother of a Columbine High type shooter in Oregon, a frustrated school principal (Forrest Whittaker) in inner city Chicago, and in a gun store in Charlottesville Virginia with grandfather-owner (Donald Sutherland) and his granddaughter (Linda Cardinelli from ER). This movie is slow, dull, flat and disorganized. It makes no coherent points. Don't waste an hour and a half with it. The first effort for this director is a waste of everyone's time. The 2002 version with James Coburn is infinitely more lively and interesting.
somehope
... 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.
