Review: 'Thoughts & Prayers' examines shooter preparedness in the face of political apathy

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“Thoughts & Prayers,” premiering Tuesday on HBO, is a documentary film about the $3-billion “active shooter preparedness industry,” that space where American failure meets American entrepreneurism.Though it approaches its subject with a certain formal neutrality, the title, a phrase now synonymous with political emptiness, does suggest a point of view.

(Its subtitle is “How to Survive an Active Shooter in America.”)That industry includes various forms of training involving teachers, students and first responders and products theoretically created to increase security — locks, alarms, robot dogs, bulletproof backpacks, bulletproof glass and bulletproof shelters that sit in the corner of a classroom.One company will put an image of your choice on a bulletproof wall hanging and sells a “skateboard [that] will outperform any other skateboard on the market, but it’s also a self defense shield.” “Every time there’s a tragedy, it economically benefits my family,” its founder admits.

“We could be a $300-million company by the time this documentary airs.”One company makes tourniquets “easy to apply in case of a mass casualty incident”; another specializes in latex bullet wounds for use in mass shooter drills: “the gunshot through and through to the neck … the multiple gunshot wound to the abdomen.” One senses in these endeavors a not insincere overreaction that substitutes for political action, shifting responsibility onto potential victims and accepting the problem as intractable.(Or as the Onion headline, published 38 times since 2014, has it, “No Way to Prevent This, Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”)Directed by Zackary Canepari and Jessica Dimmock, it’s a sad black comedy, an Errol Morris sort of subject, shot in an Errol Morris sort of way — formal, neutral.

The cinematography, by Jarred Alterman, is quite handsome a...