License to Kill

The closest thing you get to a dull moment in Michael Moore's latest picture, Bowling for Columbine, is an interview with Marilyn Manson. Looking sylphlike in his concert get-up--his face slashed ear-to-ear by a band of black paint, his eyes behind their pale contact lenses flashing a roadkill

stare--Manson lolls backstage, discussing the teen murders in Littleton, Colorado, and his special place in their history. He was the favorite recording artist of the boys who shot up Columbine High School. As a result, professional opinion-mongers made him their leading candidate for Evil Force Behind the Massacre--to which nomination, he responds with words that are straightforward, sensible and a little long-winded. For once, it seems, Moore has failed to generate much-needed comic relief, or heat, or light; and then Manson rescues the scene with a zinger worthy of his outfit. Asked what he would say to the people of Littleton, he replies sharply, in a decisive baritone, "Nothing. I wouldn't say a word. I would listen to them. Because that's what nobody ever did."

This line may or may not serve as an endorsement of Bowling for Columbine. Yes, Moore listens to some of the people of Littleton--for example, a trio of girls who studied with the murderers in their for-credit bowling class. But Moore also listens to all sorts of other people, in all sorts of places: members of the Michigan Militia at their training camp in the woods; a sociologist on the streets of South Central LA; a series of Canadians in their unlocked homes (into which Moore drops uninvited); a guy in a welfare-to-work program, taking the long, long bus ride to his job. To these interviews--which are prankish, somber and alarming by turns--Moore adds found footage, deliberately corny music, an animation in the South Park style, a quick parody of TV cop shows. He's even got videotape from the surveillance cameras in Columbine High School, showing part of the assault.

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