Michael Moore's engaging and enraging documentary on gun culture in America, and by extension violence, homicide, and the climate of fear in America. Dishevelled as ever in his baggy clothes and collection of ballcaps (one of them emblazoned with "Writer"), usually unshaven, a definitive schlump, he is still his own protagonist, no matter how antagonistic a one. Here he is, selecting a free rifle as a bonus "gift" for opening a CD account at a heartland bank cum licensed firearms dealer. Here he is, testing the theory that Torontonians don't bother to lock their homes, by going right up to some front doors and opening them. (Canada comes off very well in the film, not just for the low murder rate among a well-armed populace, but for the bedrock of social beneficence.) And here he is, escorting two crippled survivors of the Columbine school shooting to Kmart headquarters, to "return" the bullets to their place of purchase. Surprisingly -- you can see it plainly on his face -- Kmart capitulates to the cease-and-desist demand, a tiny victory on Moore's quixotic quest to change the world. His search far and wide for connections and causalities, for an explanatory nexus, can at times resemble mental meandering. And he is not averse to the cheap shot and the heavy hand: a montage of U.S. foreign-affairs follies will be accompanied by Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World." (Joey Ramone's sneeringly ironic cover version of the song will be heard in the closing credits.) Yet his sincerity, for all his showmanship and all his sarcasm, never seems in doubt. His lack of slickness may or may not say something about his level of expertise as a filmmaker. The film is not so much unslick as strategically and pragmatically anti-slick. The film mirrors the filmmaker. With Marilyn Manson, Dick Clark, Charlton Heston. (2002) — Duncan Shepherd