This is not a film about gun control. It is a film about the fearful heart and soul of the United States, and the 280 million Americans lucky enough to have the right to a constitutionally protected Uzi. From a look at the Columbine High School security camera tapes to the home of Oscar-winning NRA President Charlton Heston, from a young man who makes homemade napalm with The Anarchist's Cookbook to the murder of a six-year-old girl by another six-year-old. Bowling for Columbine is a journey through the US, through our past, hoping to discover why our pursuit of happiness is so riddled with violence.
These foreign films share the same emotional core, themes, and structural feel as Bowling for Columbine. Every one of them has confirmed English subtitles or dubbing.
What ties these together is injustice, feeling powerless, and loss of innocence. The world both films live in revolves around class and money, poverty, and corrupt institutions. Both move the same way too, dark comedy, absurdist, and escalating.
