filmcritic . com presents a review from staff member jeremiah kipp . you can find the review with full credits at <a href= " http : //www . filmcritic . com/misc/emporium . nsf/2a460f93626cd4678625624c007f2b46/e63ca07a750cf033882568d0001963bf ? opendocument " >http : //www . filmcritic . com/misc/emporium . nsf/2a460f93626cd4678625624c007f2b46/e63ca07a750cf033882568d0001963bf ? opendocument</a> quite a cast has been assembled for this altman-esque tale of interlocked lives , all clamoring around the " serious social problem " of gun control . while there's no denying that the usa has over fifty million gun owners and it's a subject worthy of address and debate , this movie thuddingly hits the same numb point over and over again : guns are bad , guns can kill . that's about as resonant as it's the rage will get . jeff daniels and joan allen play a miserable suburban couple whose marriage is disrupted by an accidental shooting in their living room at midnight . as it turns out , the guy was daniels' business partner . allen moves out in disgust and , through a process of self-discovery , figures out that her happy little life was nothing more than a middle class prison . she hides away at her new workplace , in the employ of eccentric millionaire and computer guru gary sinise . daniels sits at home fuming , renting pornography and playing with his gun . andre braugher ( as daniels' attorney ) and david schwimmer play a gay couple who have just purchased their first pistol . good timing , too , if you're talking soap operas . schwimmer has begun to suspect his longtime companion of having an affair . braugher's problems escalate when his white trash lover ( anna paquin ) becomes afraid that her powder keg older brother ( wild giovanni ribisi ) is gonna grab his gun and blow braugher away . of course , this being an altman-esque intertwined plot , ribisi is chasing after entirely the wrong guy . he thinks friendly video store clerk josh brolin is the one who's playing lolita with his kid sister . wouldn't you know that brolin worked for mad computer guru sinise at the start of the movie ? guns figure into each narrative , and because they're so close at hand our trigger happy cast are always a hairs breath from blowing each other away . unfortunately , they don't . we the audience are stuck with ninety minutes of angry one-note characters who rub their quirkiness in our faces . jeff daniels flounders as a pompous hubbie who screams and yells when he doesn't get his way and david schwimmer is grating as a swishy gay stereotype prone to fidgety hissy-fits . robert forster sleepwalks through the standard " cop ready for retirement " role who's investigating every other character , often launching into bone dry , monotonous speeches about the grim state of the world . oh , the humanity . i don't fault the cast , though . some of them , like the always reliable joan allen , fare better than others . gary sinise in particular has fun with his socially inept geek persona , often reacting to the computer screens in his room which purportedly reflect his games but seem to display his own manic thoughts ( which sometimes involve violence and guns , natch . ) only problem is , the charismatic and mannered sinise often looks like he belongs in another movie entirely - say , a better terry gilliam movie , than the bland , by-the-numbers movie of the week everyone else is taking part in . once you get past the characters , the very look of the film screams student filmmaker . the budget shows its seams painfully in poorly lit flat imagery , often cheating shots to avoid showing the entire house of a millionaire or upper middle class couple in ways which limit the film visually . the final montage where everything heats up and blows , involving several guns going off and many characters buying the farm , it's so choppy and unclear that i didn't know what happened to a major character until catching it a second time . intended as a bleak comedy about the " gun control problem " , the movie never finds enough social nuances in its display of guns in the homes of the rich , the middle class and the poor to work as humor or political satire . the caricatures and situations james stern has placed under his microscope are simply too broad to have much of an impact . by the time i reached the closing credits , where we are informed what happened to each of the characters afterwards in a cutesy anecdote about what they learned ( such as " don't shoot the friendly charging rhino , climb up a tree instead ! " ) , the temptation was great to hang up my liberal conscience and join charlton heston's merry men at the nra . i had to remind myself , " it's only a movie , it's only a movie… " 
