'Bowling For Columbine' (R) (Out of four)

The man who made it cool to go to documentaries, Michael Moore, is back in the saddle again with a stinging, on-target and thoughtful film on America's fascination with guns and violence.

Moore first came into the public's consciousness with his witty indictment of corporate America in "Roger And Me." He has a unique, everyman approach in which he tracks down the bad guys and asks them to explain to the public why they are doing everything from polluting the air to putting autoworkers out of work.

His latest bulls-eye is "Bowling for Columbine," one of the few documentaries to have been invited to the Cannes Film Festival. The film is a well-thought out and constructed exploration of why Americans appear to be fascinated with guns and how fear and violence are two of the greatest motivators in the world.

Sounds dry, doesn't it? Not in the hands of Moore. He shows the absurd lengths that people go to in exercising their right to bear arms. For example, a bank gave a gun away with a money market account. Hunters dressed their dog up in camouflage, tied a gun to his back and ended up getting shot by the gun. Also shown are military militias that claim to be fun for the whole family.

Moore travels to Canada to see what that country is doing differently, because its murder by gun rate is practically nonexistent. Turns out nothing, not many people even lock their doors.

A particularly uncomfortable, yet telling, exchange is when Moore visits Charlton Heston at his home and grills him on why the National Rifle Association held conventions in towns close to where children had been murdered by guns.

But the central push of the film is the Columbine massacres. Moore shows graphic surveillance video of the high school students running for their lives as the two gun-toting students work their way through the school. Moore takes two of those victims on a field trip to confront Kmart about selling bullets in their stores.

What does bowling have to do with anything? It turns out that the two students who killed so many in Littleton, Colo., had gone bowling shortly before they went on their rampage. The juxtaposition between something so normal and what happened next is an extremely chilling thought.

Whether you are a journalist, a gun-lover or a gun-hater, this is an important movie sure to spur heated debates.