10 Most Dishonest Editing Cuts In Film History

6. Michael Moore Opens A Bank Account, Gets A Free Rifle Immediately - Bowling For Columbine

Michael Moore's legendary 2002 documentary about American gun culture remains as ferociously relevant today as it was almost 20 years ago, but as is the case with most of Moore's films, he also employs some cheeky, arguably unethical editing tricks to get his point across.

Bowling for Columbine memorably opens with Moore visiting a Michigan bank where customers are given a free hunting rifle for making a deposit, and the filmmaker is seen doing just that.

He makes the deposit, fills out the forms, gets his rifle, and the film then cuts to Moore proudly brandishing the weapon in the bank's parking lot.

Except, that's not quite how it went down.

In reality, the bank has a gun delivered to a nearby licensed weapons dealer after performing a background check on the customer.

In the case of the film, they only agreed to hand Moore a gun on the premises after his agents claimed he was making a film about unique businesses in America. Doing so required them to ship the gun from a vault 300 miles away the night before.

The shot of Moore walking out of the bank into the parking lot was reportedly filmed at a later date, and though the director insists that none of the scene was staged, he did admit that the passage of time was compressed for "production reasons," whatever that means.

It's all the more frustrating as Moore makes so many brilliant arguments in his film, so one has to wonder why he bothered cooking-up half-truths such as this which only undermine his fine work.

Then again, a bank giving out rifles at all is still deeply unsettling, no matter the iffy editing tricks at work.