IT'S NOT often you can say a documentary is riveting. Educational, interesting yes, but nail-bitingly tense? Not as a general rule.

But Michael Moore's Oscar-winning documentary about American gun culture has some real edge-of-seat moments, not least the now legendary showdown with National Rifle Association president Charlton Heston and some tense moments in a supermarket when two of the boys who were injured in the Columbine massacre decide to return the bullets that are lodged in their bodies which were bought from the store.

That's not to say that Bowling For Columbine isn't educational and interesting. It's also funny, powerful and more than a little alarming.

Spurred on by the events at Columbine, where two boys went bowling for extra credit at school before massacring their class-mates and teachers and finally killing themselves, Moore looks at gun culture and the issues surrounding it in America.

The film is packed with revelations that are so bizarre you are both amused and horrified at the same time - for instance, there is a bank in America where everyone who opens an account gets a free gun! Who said irony was lost on Americans?

Moore addresses many of the assumptions about why the rate of gun-related crime is so high in the US - it has over 11,000 firearms homicides a year compared to the UK's 68 - but avoids patronising the viewer, presenting the facts and allowing us to draw our own conclusions.

And what alarming conclusions they are!

Rating: 9/10