It is a performances centric movie

A different way of telling a story

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

It's a period between 1990 to 1994 in South Africa. The Inkatha Movement comprising of Zulu warriors helped by elements of the white Apartheid security forces are fighting a civil war with the ANC. Greg Marinovich (Ryan Phillippe) is a freelance photographer new to the scene. He faces high risks to go inside a Zulu work camp to take pictures and sells them to the newspaper The Star. He begins a relationship with photo editor Robin Comley (Malin Akerman). With other photographers Kevin Carter (Taylor Kitsch), João Silva, and Ken Oosterbroek, the group becomes known as the Bang-Bang Club.The photographing inside the townships is thrilling. Those scenes have the intensity of the unknown. The story of the four photographers is a muddle. There are compelling sections but the overall flow is lacking. Phillippe and Kitsch have the bravado of youthful exuberance. The love story is perfunctory. Kitsch has nice character arch with that Sudan picture. Overall, this movie has great sections but the total is not as great as its individual parts.

If you had to show a bunch of photographers running around taking random pictures in the wilderness of Africa throughout the 2 hours with no plot, no real story-just a collage of random occurrences, unnecessarily forced love-angles and unwanted emotionalism with no real vigor then you hit the nail right on the head with this one. I have never seen an attempt to throw a bunch of unrelated events together to make a full film with so much dexterity than this film. If you just wanted to show him win the pulitzer for photojournalism then you could have made into a half an hour biography with about the same impact and story as this wasted piece here. Skip it for you own good.

I lived in Johannesburg, working for the Independent Electoral Commission during this period, on a leave of absence from the print media. This is a true-to-life (if slightly glamorized) depiction of a group of fearless and dedicated photographers who probably ultimately defused a potential civil war by their heroic reporting.Glamorized in that they were a grungier bunch (see the photos in the credits at the end), who took far greater risks than portrayed in the movie. I dare say that the public would not have believed a more accurate story.Anyone who is interested in the history of Southern Africa should watch this. Nearly 20 years later, it still leaves me shaken.Also good to see South African actors in the movie, even if most of the leads were imports.

It was the early 1990s and Mandella was nearing his freedom from prison and eventual President of South Africa in its free election.There still was rampant fighting and killing between different tribes. So bad was the hate that even if a lone man was suspected of being of the wrong tribe he was beaten and killed, with the same sense that one might kill a rabbit and bring it home for dinner. Except the dead were left in the streets.Strife like this draws professional photographers, every day hoping to get a unique picture that will enhance their reputation and pad their wallet. This movie and its title are about the photographers, in particular 4 of them who became members of what then was called "the bang bang club", the men who every day went among the fighting and shooting, the "bang bangs" of ammunition. Not all of them survived.Main focus is on Ryan Phillippe as Greg Marinovich, a South African photographer who was awarded the Pulitzer for some of his photos. His romantic interest is pretty Malin Akerman as Robin Comley.The movie also treats the question, "are photographers just innocent bystanders who record the events without interfering?" In one scene we see Marinovich at first just photographing, but then trying to intercede as a man is beaten and eventually set on fire. You cannot do that job, and see what you see, without being changed.