The Bang Bang Club Trailer: Ryan Phillippe and Malin Akerman Get in Over Their Heads in Africa

When a trailer starts with attractive white people partying and laughing at danger in war-torn Africa, it's pretty clear that the electric guitar score will fade and things will get serious around the halfway point. And indeed, it's about one minute into the trailer for The Bang Bang Club when the war photographer played by Ryan Phillipe starts to realize that maybe a war zone isn't all fun and games. But the plot seems to take a potentially interesting route from here.

Rather than showing Phillippe putting down his camera and fighting for justice alongside an oppressed people, the trailer suggests that the film makes a legitimate effort to delve into the moral gray area of photographing horrific acts of violence and war crimes.

For example, can someone who stands by and snaps photos of a brutal murder in progress really pat themselves on the back even if their photo brings international attention to oppression and injustice? And even if they can, what sort of mental toll does this take? The preview also touches on the fact that photos taken with the best intentions can be easily be re-appropriated by people with the worst intentions. And then there's that obsessive, lurid voyeurism that's often inherent to this line of work.

It'd be great to see a thoughtful movie that examines these issues without taking the easy way out, and the production values and photography look totally immersive in this trailer. That said, if the movie peters out by solving some relationship issue with Malin Akerman and ending with a cut-and-dry do-gooder turn by Phillipe, count me out. Like the trailer says, "it's not always black and white."

But it seems unlikely that the film will take the safe route. It's based on a book by real-life war photographers during the end of the Apartheid in Africa, and from what I've read, it indeed sounds like a messy, emotional and complicated affair.

Verdict: Sold.