“Action, Then Cameras”
“The Bang Bang Club” doesn’t offer enough bang-bang for your bucks. It’s an amateur version of a mature movie. It looks like the real thing on the surface, but lacks any real depth.
Ryan Phillippe plays real-life combat photojournalist Greg Marinovich. As a member of a gang of photographers, Marinovich finds himself competiting with his colleagues to get the best shot of the bloody action that surrounds them daily.
These wartime paparazzi are based in the South African town of Soweto in the mid-90s. Very little is explained about the politics of the conflict they are covering. They just follow the bloodshed the way Hollywood paparazzi follow Lindsay Lohan.
Their photos are then sold to the photo editor of a Johannesburg newspaper played by Malin Akerman. Almost as an obligitory element to the film, Akerman and Phillippe develop a romantic relationship that leads absolutely nowhere. Akerman’s British accent is so bad that it makes Madonna sound positively royal by comparison!