American Gun
IFC Films | Release Date: March 22, 2006 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
48
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 14 Critic Reviews
Positive:
4
Mixed:
8
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
The overall effect of watching his film is a bit like a nerve-racking game of Russian roulette: You just know a gun is going to go off, but you don't know which of this multitude of characters it's going to hit. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsJami Bernard
While this is not exactly a hopeful movie, it's a polished exercise in the kind of social commentary that can wake people up. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneJessica Reaves
The structural sibling to Paul Haggis' race relations opus ("Crash"), but beyond the similarly interwoven vignettes, it's a different animal altogether: messier, more complicated and ultimately more interesting. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Aric Avelino shows an almost tender restraint in his story-telling, not pounding us with a message but simply looking steadily at how guns have made these lives difficult. Read full review
60
Film ThreatFelix Vasques Jr.
The last act of American Gun is quite possibly one of the most ridiculous and forced dramatic twists I've seen in years. Read full review
50
Village VoiceMichael Atkinson
All of the stories are conceived as ongoing plights, and have no third act. Which would be an improvement on Haggis's hyperbolic civics lesson if Avelino had the chops to master realism and embrace ambivalence. The acting is pro enough to keep your blood up, but the reverb is minimal. Read full review
50
The New York TimesStephen Holden
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. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleJohn McMurtrie
Three story lines make up this tense movie, and while each has its strengths, they don't quite add up to a satisfying whole. Read full review
42
The A.V. ClubNoel Murray
The Sutherland segments are the most bothersome, because they never really reach a resolution, and because they're betrayed by Avelino's uni-faceted approach.
40
The Hollywood ReporterMichael Rechtshaffen
A painfully earnest but dramatically inert film. Read full review
40
VarietyJoe Leydon
Lacks focus and momentum as it attempts to interweave diverse story strands into a cautionary tapestry. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesKevin Crust
The film is haphazardly structured, undercutting its potential power. Read full review
38
New York PostKyle Smith
It turns out the stories don't unite at all. Instead, we get a series of dramatic vignettes, most of them decently executed but all of them rooted in the weepy sensibility of TV movies. Read full review
30
L.A. WeeklyScott Foundas
This is "Crash" with gun violence substituted for racism, although the tone of director–co-writer Aric Avelino's debut feature may be closer to one of those pious public-safety films that used to be shown to schoolchildren in order to frighten them out of potential bad behavior. Read full review
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