"An Unlikely Weapon," a film by Susan Morgan Cooper, gives us the story of Eddie Adams primarily as a photojournalist with interviews with Adams himself, Tom Brokaw and other journalists testifying to the mastery of his work.

 

Cooper delves little, however, into Adams as a human being...an interesting omission given the inevitable human interest that derives from listening to a man who has photographed and survived 13 wars, six U.S. Presidents and virtually every film star of the last 50 years. While Cooper does an admirable job of detailing Adams' professional life, the story itself feels incomplete without more time devoted to Adams the man behind the camera.

 

Given that "An Unlikely Weapon" is about a photographer, it's rather surprising that the film's production credits are a tad disappointing with an abundance uneven camera shots and a sound mix that is inconsistent at best.  I dare say that the film would have likely looked much better had Adams himself been behind the camera.

 

An Official Selection of the 2008 Indianapolis International Film Festival, "An Unlikely Weapon" is an interesting, yet surprisingly disappointing film about a photographer who has set the tone for war photography for the past 50 years.