Like most people who spend a lot of time watching movies, I was overcome with mixed emotions when I read the recent news story about the Philadelphia moviegoer  who, disturbed by talkative audience members in the next row, took it upon himself to quiet them down – by shooting one of them.

On the one hand, I mentally went through the whole liberal litany: about the epidemic of gun violence in this country and its sorry legacy, etc.

On the other hand, I thought, Perhaps arming moviegoers IS the answer to bad movie manners.

God knows I’ve tried everything else. I’ve got a three-part process that I run through when I’m in a theater and find myself seated near someone who thinks he is in his own living room and, thus, free to comment upon what’s happening on the screen or anything else that pops into his head.

1) I turn and give a baleful look. This rarely works; perhaps they think I’m looking at someone else. My kids certainly do when I use it on them.

2) If the stink-eye doesn’t do the trick, I turn around and loudly say, “Ssshh!” The number of S’s and H’s varies, depending on how loudly they’re talking and the relevance of their comments to what’s transpiring on the screen.

3) If the “shush” isn’t effective, then it’s time to pull out my most serious weapon. When I was a younger man who believed in the power of strong language to underpin any argument, that meant turning around the third time and saying, “Will you shut the f*** up?” Once I was the father of children and had to avoid being a bad role model, I rewrote my line, altering it to “Will you please stop talking?”

It almost always comes down to #3. And that usually works. At least until recently.

Last August, I went to a screening to review the comedy “Hamlet 2.” This was what is known in the trade as an all-media screening, which means that the film company papers the house with free passes to ordinary folks, who have won their tickets in radio-station giveaways and the like. The fact that it’s a free movie usually outweighs their interest in what the movie actually is.

But the thinking – on the part of the movie companies, that is – is that certain types of movies (i.e., stupid, gross-out comedies; high-concept, low-intelligence action films) might go over better with critics if they’re forced to watch them while surrounded by an audience full of guffawing jackasses or rowdy, cheering yahoos.

(Note to movie companies: You are soooo wrong about this.)

As it happens, “Hamlet 2” was neither a stupid comedy nor a high-concept action film. It was a weakly satirical arthouse comedy whose reach exceeded its grasp. It was in no sense a mass-audience film, but that’s who we critics were watching it with in a multiplex near Madison Square Garden on a hot August afternoon.

(And what does it tell you about the rest of the audience that they were able to tear themselves away from their other obligations to go to a movie on a weekday afternoon? I mean, it’s my job – what’s their excuse?)

A few minutes into the film, I heard talking from the seat next to me. I turned to discover the woman directly to my left in an animated conversation on her cell phone. “Would you please stop talking?” I said.

She looked at me as though I was speaking a foreign-language, but one whose gist she got. So she stopped talking. Or so I thought; as it turned out, she had merely paused to listen to the person on the other end of the line.

Then she started talking again. It was, to say the least, distracting.

“Would you please stop talking on your phone?” I said, just to be sure she knew I was speaking to her.

She gave me a look as though I’d just offered her a poisonous snake. But she did close her cell phone.

Then she turned around and started talking to a friend in the row behind her – even more loudly.

“I’m trying to watch the movie – would you please be quiet?” I said.

At which point she erupted in a fit of cursing, essentially railing against my intrusion on her personal space and her freedom to do and say exactly what she pleased.

It escalated briefly, with both of us raising our voices without giving an inch. Finally, another critic, seated a couple of rows ahead of us, got up, walked up the stairs until he towered over this woman, shook a mommy finger (you know: where you point your finger and shake it, the way your mom used to when she was scolding you) in her face and said, “This stops now. Do you understand? NOW! Or I’ll get someone to throw you out.” Then he went back to his seat.

She did shut up. A few minutes later, apparently bored by the movie, she left.

I don’t own a gun. I don’t believe in handguns.

But that guy in Philadelphia? I feel ya, pal.

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