If the voice narrating Shelley Saywell’s disturbing documentary Running Guns: A Journey Into The Small Arms Trade sounds familiar, it should. It belongs to Kiefer Sutherland, television’s freedom fighting vigilante, Jack Bauer.
The 24 star was in Africa last summer shooting 24: Redemption, the two-hour TV-movie which aired last November, when he was contacted by Toronto-born filmmaker Saywell to narrate Running Guns. The 70-minute documentary airs Sunday at 7:30 p.m. E.T. on History Television.
Narrating this documentary seems like some sort of penance for Sutherland, who, was Bauer, has shot down more people in the past seven seasons than 50 Dirty Harry movies. (Fox just announced that he’ll be back to shoot ’em up again for an eighth season starting next January.)
Like Bauer, Saywell has had to stare down a few AK-47s in her career. Her previous documentaries have included Crimes of Honour, Kim’s Story: The Road from Vietnam and A Child’s Century of War, which was short-listed for an Academy Award. The Toronto-native and her tight little film crew was swarmed twice in Bosnia, forced at gunpoint to give up their flak jackets and other protective gear. I spoke with her this week about some of her experiences. Read the full CP story here.
Saywell suggests many of the small arms that were supposed to be destroyed in Bosnia wound up in Afghanistan and Iraq. Among the grim statistics in the film: there is one gun for every ten people on earth, eight million small arms are manufactured yearly and every year, enough bullets are made to kill every human twice.
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