EssenceStory Well Deserved Praise

Iseerphia All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

Bergorks If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

ctg0724 I watched Crash. I thought it was decent. Oscar worthy? Absolutely not. I watched Babel. I thought it was absolutely terrible. If you go to the comments on that movie, you will find what I wrote about it. I watched Magnolia. Another decent type of these, but nothing I would watch over again. All of these movies got quite a bit of notice. Whether they deserved it or not, I don't really know.But what I do know is that American Gun deserved some serious attention. This movie, which clearly had a lower budget than all of those other movies, was the greatest film of the multiple stories genre.Maybe it's just because I don't consider "racism bad" a good enough message in a movie for the past two decades (except American History X); I think gun violence, especially in high schools, is one of the most important issues in our country. This movie just managed to get under my skin and rip out emotion from me a lot better than most movies I have seen. This movie should have received the Oscar that Crash won. It was completed before Crash. Forrest Whitaker alone is better than every actor and actress in Crash combined.Few films pull off the loosely connected people style very well. It annoys me when a movie filled with A-list celebrities gets noticed because of it. American Gun is one of the few that didn't get that notice and deserved it.

Gregory Leong I have seen at least four other films (including Michael Moore's documentary) about the guns in America, and their easy availability - three of these were about senseless shootings in schools. And now we have another. Unfortunately, this is the least interesting of the lot. Gus van Sant's "Elephant" tops the board in its classic understatement, and weaves disparate strands together in the end. With this movie, which dissects the aftermath of a school shooting starts off with a tantalising premise - what happens AFTER? It is almost too horrible to bear, the mother (a marvelous performance by Marcia Gay Harden) of a shooter in a school massacre, the traumatised police officer, the headmaster who is so intent on stopping guns in schools that he neglects (oh cliché cliché!) his own family and so on are all formulaic plot devices at the best. The performances by the main actors are really good, but the poor material they have been given negates all.There is no sense of interconnectivity between the individual subplots, not really even at the end, when a totally gratuitous bit of violence brings just two of the sub-plot protagonists accidentally together.The movie builds up to nothing, and so ends with a big SO WHAT?

HawksRevenge I have to say I enjoyed this film immensely; there are several stories that are going on and they are all of society's and family's problems brought to life.One story focuses on a woman's devastated life after her son killed his fellow students and she is making sure her other son is safe, and her unforgiving neighbors relentless need to get their point across There is also a story about an African American principal and his family coping with the daily trial of living in the inner city, and also a troubled African American student who lives, goes to school and works in an area where he feels he needs to be armed.In addition there are stories about the police who are being blamed for not doing more than they did.Towards the end of the movie there is a scene where a mini mart is robbed and two people are killed one a young girl in to buy a soda Conclusion; society has progressed around the country especially in Texas and all the major cities, where people especially kids feel the need to be armed to be safe Today kids are into the most harmful and dangerous things around, sex, drugs and worse, and your average American home has at least one gun, and the parents say my kids know better than to touch any guns, "is that right?" Society is exactly the problem!! This film was excellent!!

Brandi Marie From the first time I heard about the movie, I've been waiting to see it. I finally saw it earlier tonight after begging my mother to order the movie on DEMAND. Like my title implies, the film ended too soon. I knew beforehand that it was only 95 minutes, but that's way different than actually watching it.The characters - no matter how awful or sweet - somehow makes you love them in one way or another. You can't help but me sympathetic to each situation, because every character has something to offer. You will walk away learning something, no doubt.To the ones who say they're tired of intertwining stories or whatever, this is one of the best films you could ever hope to witness with your own two eyes.This movie is a true tale. I live like these characters almost everyday and I know people like that. So please give it a chance before you rag. I promise you won't regret it.