I remember the first and only time I fired a gun. Can't remember exactly which kind it was (a cardinal sin, growing up in Michigan), but what I do remember is looking down the barrel of it at a 10-point buck, taking my best aim, pulling the trigger and - missing. I was surprised at the way the gun "kicked back" my shoulder. Over the course of a few seasons, I never did shoot a deer, though it certainly wasn't for lack of trying. It's a way of life in Michigan when deer season comes around - if you're a boy (and a few girls), it's something you just do - almost above question.

Fellow Michigan native and film documentarian, Michael Moore has created a penetrating new film that asks some big questions about guns and violence in American culture-and settles on no firm answers. Moore, of the now-famous shaggy dog appearance and deceptively humorous approach to tearing the blood and guts out of hypocrisy in America, brings us the funny and disturbing, Bowling for Columbine. A frightening record of a society run amok - so controlled by fear, capitalism and the quite possibly unnecessary need for self-defense - that firearms have become a way of life.

Bowling for Columbine is an ambitious film. From the start, Moore's position is clear: guns and fear have so deeply become a part of American culture that their effect is inescapable. More Americans die at the barrel of firearms each year than in practically any other country. Why?

Moore uses the 1999 school-shooting tragedy at Columbine High School as a launching pad. He employs his trademark expansive and scurrilous approach to a mind-boggling series of interviews and an avalanche of television news clips¾designed to create a picture of a society in the throes of fear, violence and near unregulated chaos.

In the America of Bowling for Columbine, the United States has armed the very terrorists we're now fighting. Six-year-old children are nonchalantly killing their classmates; members of the Michigan Militia argue for "eliminating the middle man" (police) in their personal responsibility to defend themselves; a bank offers free firearms just for opening an account!

Of the many subjects interviewed for the film, some memorable guests include the "normal." weapon-obsessed brother of Okalahoma City bomber Terry Nichols and trigger-happy "soldiers" in the Michigan Militia. We meet a decidedly normal and down-to-earth Marilyn Manson, both articulate and sensible; a cheery Napalm-maker who cribs his recipes from "The Anarchist's Cookbook"; defiant NRA President Charlton Heston; and a befuddled Dick Clark, culling tax breaks from welfare workers (a thread Moore links to a neglected child-shooting case).

Bowling for Columbine is an accomplished film, more so than any of Moore's other entertaining and similarly subversive outings. It's a film that sets an incredible goal for itself - to discover the impetus and origins of violent aggression in America - and ends up with a frustrated Moore unable to provide any concrete answers. But then again, how could he? It's provocative stuff, and though frequently filled with belly laughs, it contains sobering images that indict American foreign policy of the last half century, as well as new security-cam footage capturing the startling moments of terror and panic as Harris and Klebold initiated their Columbine killing spree.

In the film's most memorable sequence, Moore marches two surviving teen victims, bullets lodged in their bodies, to the K-mart corporate headquarters (where bullets were bought over-the-counter, for $.17 each, and used in the shootings) with the demand that K-Mart stop selling firearm ammunition. That the sequence ends in success with a K-Mart press conference announcing their intention to do so hardly seems a victory.

In the film's most typically Moore moment, a cornered Charlton Heston (foolishly inviting Moore into his home for an interview) is interrogated for his opinions on firearms and violence in America today. Heston is urged for an apology for the insensitive behavior of the NRA, nervy enough to hold a meeting close to the scene of a tragic school shooting. Out of his element and realizing he's been duped, a confused and disoriented Heston throws his arms in the air and abruptly exits.

As in all Moore's films, there's much fun to be had at the expense of backwoods local "yokel" types who say the most inarticulate and nonsensical things in defense of their own logic. Their responses combined with Moore's droll reactions often create a feeling of unparalleled comic subversion. But when I think about what most affected me in Bowling for Columbine, it is the level of compassion that Moore shows when handling the most sensitive and still recent American psychological wounds. I ordinarily think of him as a wild card, button-pusher - a cuddlier Nick Broomfield, if you will. But there are moments in this film, whether he's consoling a schoolteacher who helplessly watched a six-year-old student die, or chatting with a neighbor of Columbine who is unexpectedly overcome with the kind of sorrow for which the entire community grieves, that are undeniably moving. Bowling for Columbine is one of the year's best films.