American Gun Reviews

Writer/director Alan Jacobs is so committed to downplaying melodrama in his somber road movie that he sucks all the dramatic life out of his message. Distraught because her daughter Mia (Alexandra Holden) has run away just before the Christmas holidays, divorcee Penny seeks advice from her own parents, Martin (James Coburn) and Anne Tillman (Barbara Bain). But even in her Vermont hometown, trouble dogs Penny's steps. While buying Christmas presents at the mall for her parents, she crosses paths with an armed mugger. The next thing you know, the Tillmans are conducting Penny's funeral service. Grief-stricken, Martin sets out to accomplish two goals: To bring runaway Mia home and protect her from an ever-more violent culture and trace the ownership of the gun that killed Penny. Details about the gun's history and manufacture bring no peace of mind. Martin learns that the weapon once helped a woman escape her kidnapper; it also figured in a romantic dispute that escalated and destroyed the promising future of an African-American teenager. When Martin finally locates Mia, she too is carrying a gun and running with the wrong crowd. He wants God to give him a second chance with his willful granddaughter. The film's shocking twist, which reveals the identity of Penny's murderer, puts Martin's crusade through America's gun-toting highways and byways into a dramatically different light. Jacobs' drama seeks to indict the IRA and America's ongoing love of guns, but since Martin is the only character with any depth the drama never seems real and the film's winds up feeling like a polemical public service announcement.