Greenwald takes aim at the NRA
Political documentarian Robert Greenwald tackles the gun lobby with his latest film “Making a Killing: Guns, Greed and the NRA.”
The audience for Greenwald projects like “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism” and “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price” will know what to expect here: a lot of persuasive personal stories and steely outrage, peppered liberally with statis-tics.
The film is roughly divided into five sections, each covering an aspect of how gun violence affects American lives every day: domestic disputes, accidental shootings, crime, suicide and mass murder. At the end of each section, Greenwald throws numbers onto the screen to suggest the depth of the problem and possible solutions the NRA is resisting.
Documentaries like “Making a Killing” don’t really function as cinema or even as journalism. They’re more like pamphlets or campaign ads — designed to rile people up, not to dazzle them with aesthetics.
But as always with Greenwald, it’s refreshing that he doesn’t simply indulge in fear-mongering. He has the resources and the research team to pore over data, culling relevant points and encouraging action.
And while anecdotes aren’t the same as evidence, it’s hard not to be moved by the first-person accounts of ordinary people.
Even beyond the number-crunching, there’s value in the way that Greenwald gives the victims a voice.
“Making a Killing: Guns, Greed and the NRA.” Not rated. Running time: 1 hour, 43 minutes. Playing: Laemmle Music Hall, Beverly Hills.