The Bang Bang Club

South Africa at the start of the nineties. Apartheid is coming apart, and in the period before the elections violence in the townships rises; rival political groups are at each other and there are deaths every day. Four young photographers cover it. Every morning they go into the townships, stand in the middle of the fighting, and get their frames to the newspapers by evening. The press gives them a name. One of them wins a Pulitzer. One of them is killed. Steven Silver directs. Ryan Phillippe, Malin Akerman and Taylor Kitsch are in the cast. The story is real. Greg Marinovich, Kevin Carter, Ken Oosterbroek and João Silva worked together in that period. Marinovich and Carter won Pulitzers; Oosterbroek was shot in a clash in 1994 and Carter took his own life the same year. The question at the centre is the photographer's position. When Carter's photograph from Sudan was published it caused a large argument and he was asked why he had not intervened; this film, which is fiction rather than documentary, carries that argument directly. What the narrative shows is habit: after a while the men frame death as a job, and the cost of that surfaces later. It was shot on location and the scenes of fighting are based on photographs from the period. Its limit is the script; two of the four characters do not separate enough and the romantic strand weakens the narrative. Who it is for: anyone interested in photography, war reporting and the history of South Africa. Who it is not for: the violence is direct, the narrative is episodic, and the inner lives of the characters are not opened enough.