An Unlikely Weapon (2008)

80% of critics liked it
(15 reviews)
57% of users liked it
(557 ratings)

The weapon in question is not a firearm (as might be expected) but a camera: from the 1950s through the early 21st century, photojournalist and sports photographer Eddie Adams (1933-2004) caught a series of indelible images through his lens that dramatically reshaped the way in which the general… More The weapon in question is not a firearm (as might be expected) but a camera: from the 1950s through the early 21st century, photojournalist and sports photographer Eddie Adams (1933-2004) caught a series of indelible images through his lens that dramatically reshaped the way in which the general public perceived the world. Adams perhaps gained broadest recognition for his wartime photography, delivering his most leaden punch in Vietnam, with a series of gritty, grainy, and shocking images that never shied from revealing the carnage and vile brutality of the war; in particular, his image of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Vietcong prisoner via a gunshot to the head attained iconic status and led many to attribute the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam to Adams. Yet Vietnam only represented one of the photographer's coups; among other accomplishments, he "served" in 12 additional wars and used a series of photographic images to convince then-president Jimmy Carter to offer asylum to 200,000 boat people from Vietnam. In her documentary An Unlikely Weapon, filmmaker Susan Morgan Cooper takes on Adams as her subject, and -- shearing away all explorations of his personal life and history -- focuses exclusively on his professional life and personal vision as a photographer. Cooper cross-cuts between onscreen images of Adams's work and revealing interviews with many of his colleagues including Morley Safer, the late Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 1 hr. 25 min.
Directed By: Susan Morgan Cooper
Genres: Musical & Performing Arts, Documentary

In Theaters: Feb 18, 2008 Wide
Studio: Morgan Cooper Productions

Critic Reviews

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times
A picture of a complex mind with a gift for capturing humanity and inhumanity with heartbreaking force.
Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post
As chock-full of insights -- from Peter Jennings, Peter Arnett, Gordon Parks among others -- it is the famed war photojournalist's works that still create space to be startled, to be rewired.
John Anderson, Variety
It's their reminiscences that are the most poignant and revealing about a man who seems, in Cooper's interviews, to have done all he could to conceal himself.
V.A. Musetto, New York Post
In the documentary An Unlikely Weapon, Adams and people such as Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and Morley Safer talk extensively about his career as a photojournalist for The Associated Press and later for Time, Parade and even Penthouse.
Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News
The man had stories to tell, in person and in his pictures.
Nathan Lee, New York Times
The strongest material in An Unlikely Weapon contemplates the import of that shot, and of photojournalism itself, on the events of its time.
Avi Offer, NYC Movie Guru
Those previously unfamiliar with Eddie Adams will be mostly fascinated and somewhat intrigued, but, for everyone else, An Unlikely Weapon serves merely as a pedantic, Reader's Digest version of Adams' career rather than as truly revealing and illuminating
Frank Lovece, Film Journal International
Documentary about the Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist and celebrity-portrait photographer Eddie Adams, whose image of a 1968 street execution in Saigon became an icon of the Vietnam War.
Paul Brenner, Filmcritic.com
Adams, one of the great American photojournalists, is more than deserving of a documentary tribute. Unfortunately, for all its good intentions, An Unlikely Weapon is not that documentary
Nick Schager, The Screengrab
Though Morgan's non-fiction techniques are only serviceably straightforward, the director engagingly makes clear that Adams' most renowned image haunted him but did not, ultimately, define his work.
Cole Smithey, ColeSmithey.com
Photographer Eddie Adams is the subject of Susan Morgan Cooper's incisive documentary about the man who took the picture credited with helping bring an end to the Vietnam War.
Joshua Land, Time Out New York
The film feels padded even at 85 minutes, but it does effectively bring home the extent to which the infamous image continued to haunt the shutterbug, even decades later.
Eric Henderson, Slant Magazine
Serves as a fairly surface-oriented hagiography of a self-conscious rock star photographer.

Read all 13 critic reviews

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