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Aric Avelino's 'American Gun' Casts Handguns as the Villain

By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: March 22, 2006
Put the word "American" in front of almost any noun, and you have a title that trumpets its own self-importance. And when that noun is "gun," and the project is a movie, the title implies an imminent bloodbath. But "American Gun," the debut film of Aric Avelino, who wrote the screenplay with Steven Bagatourian, is nothing like that. A stridently sorrowful polemic against the proliferation of handguns in the United States, it consists of three fictional vignettes, of which only one ends in a shooting death. Preferring to throw up its hands rather than shout itself hoarse, the film sustains a mood of paranoia faintly tinged with hope.

Sam Emerson/IFC Films
Marcia Gay Harden as Janet, and Christopher Marquette as David.

Forum: Movies
Each story is set in a different part of the country. In an Oregon town, three years after a Columbine-like high school massacre, the community hasn't recovered from the trauma, and its crude attempts to address the tragedy only succeed in rubbing fresh salt in still-open wounds.

At a Chicago high school in a gang-plagued neighborhood, the principal, driven to his wits' end to maintain order, threatens one of his most promising students with expulsion after catching him with a handgun. In the weakest vignette, a troubled Virginia college student works part time in her grandfather's gun store and develops a fascination with firearms.

If "American Gun" avoids the most obvious kinds of sensationalism, it has the flaw common to many editorial broadsides of overstuffing its episodes with melodrama and symbolism. Its agenda is similar to that of "Crash" but not as fully realized. Nor does it try, like "Crash," to gather its stories into a tightly woven schematic fabric. "Crash" leaves you feeling almost pummeled; the residue of "American Gun" is a nagging sense of hopelessness.

In the richest of the three stories, Marcia Gay Harden plays Janet Huttenson, the financially strapped working-class mother of David (Christopher Marquette), the younger brother of one of the two killers in the Oregon massacre. Working two jobs, she had been able to send David to a private school. Now she can no longer afford it, and he faces the unbearable prospect of attending the same public high school as his notorious brother, who shot himself.

Desperate for money, Janet agrees to do a paid interview on local television and finds herself pelted with hostile questions about her responsibility for the shootings. A pariah in her neighborhood, she already lives in an emotional prison of self-doubt made worse by David's hostility toward her. Ms. Harden, bravely refusing to soften her character, fully inhabits Janet, a shrill, overstressed single mother who is as baffled by the tragedy as all those who assume she is the repository of guilty family secrets.

Dwelling in a similar hell, Frank (Tony Goldwyn), the police officer who was the first on the scene of the massacre, is pressured by his bosses to go on television and face a similar interrogation, but his story is too sketchy to have much impact. Examining a community where everyone is looking for a scapegoat, the episode settles on a too convenient one: crass local television.

The Chicago section revolves around Principal Carter (Forest Whitaker), who moved there from Ohio specifically to help inner-city students. But the task is so draining that he has no time left over for his wife (Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon) and young son, and the marriage is strained to the breaking point. After Carter catches one of his best students, Jay (Arlen Escarpeta), with a handgun, the movie leaves him to follow the boy to his job in the cashier's cage at a gas station and convenience store where he needs the gun as protection against robbers. The film's most unsettling image finds Jay cowering in his cage to avoid being shot.

In the most undeveloped story, Mary Ann (Linda Cardellini), a troubled freshman at the University of Virginia, working in the gun shop of her recently widowed grandfather Carl (Donald Sutherland), learns to shoot after witnessing the drugging and near rape of her best friend at a fraternity house.

For all its seriousness, "American Gun" falters on the contradictions at the core of most issue-oriented dramas. The movie's attempt to make a strong statement involves simplifying and ultimately falsifying its characters and situations to score polemical points.

"American Gun" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has violence, strong language and a scene of near rape.

American Gun

Opens today in Manhattan.

Directed by Aric Avelino; written by Mr. Avelino and Steven Bagatourian; director of photography, Nancy Schreiber; edited by Richard Nord; music by Peter Golub; production designer, Devorah Herbert; produced by Ted Kroeber; released by IFC Films. At the Landmark's Sunshine Cinema, 139-143 East Houston Street, East Village. Running time: 94 minutes.

WITH: Donald Sutherland (Carl), Forest Whitaker (Carter), Marcia Gay Harden (Janet), Linda Cardellini (Mary Ann), Tony Goldwyn (Frank), Christopher Marquette (David), Nikki Reed (Tally), Arlen Escarpeta (Jay), Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon (Sarah), Amanda Seyfried (Mouse), Melissa Leo (Louise) and Schuyler Fisk (Cicily).

Me too. That's my alltime favorite episode. At least the end of it.

Oh yeah. <sigh> You don't have to tell ME that.

I think it's the shirt is made that way. It makes no sense to me that they wanted Adam to wear something they have to cover on screen.
And TIna, why did you post the POV caps backwards?

Don't you think that it is weird that I have a clock that shows what time it is in L.A.?
I mean, I am 9 hours ahead. Oh God, I am scaring myself. LOL

I like the "pting". LOL

Ok, here is it.

My Chris Time Zone Clock with the "Adam guckt so" picture. It's currently showing L.A. time again, because I don't know for sure in which time zone he is at the moment.
Oh God, I'm insane, right? Where are the guys with the strait jacket? LOL

Should I mention my time zone clock, too?

Hey, I was just thinking ... Marc has come a long way from the Wet Dream Ep ("I didn't even have my tongue in a girl's mouth yet.") to the BMI Episode ("Define first moment."), huh?

The hair? I bet she'll rather like the eyebrows. LOL

Oh Man. I wish we could have American Television here. Or at least the undubbed version of all the shows. The dubbing is so unnecessary and SILLY!!! Why, oh WHY can't we have the original voices with subtitles like all the other countries? But nooo, in Germany everything must be dubbed!

I have my own rings and some of them look like the ones Chris has, so I don't need to buy new ones.

Well, I know just a few of his episodes, but I think this one is my favorite too.