Bumblebee
Mary Poppins Returns
Halloween
Outlander
Log in with Facebook
OR
By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies, and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and Fandango.
Please enter your email address and we will email you a new password.
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Critic Consensus: No consensus yet.
All Critics (25) | Top Critics (9) | Fresh (20) | Rotten (5) | DVD (3)
This film is an act of spiritual faith -- an eloquent, deeply felt meditation on the nature of compassion.
It's as close as we'll ever come to looking through a photographer's viewfinder as he works.
Watching War Photographer, you come to believe that Nachtwey hates the wars he shows and empathizes with the victims he reveals.
Nachtwey clears the cynicism right out of you. He makes you realize that deep inside righteousness can be found a tough beauty.
Frei provides a keenly observed, amply illustrated portrait of the man and his not exactly comfy chosen profession.
What [Frei] gives us ... is a man who uses the damage of war -- far more often than the warfare itself -- to create the kind of art shots that fill gallery shows.
Photographs tell stories, and in this case, they tell more than shots of guys looking for photos.
[There are] moments of breathtaking visual splendor...
War Photographer is a powerful documentary about a gifted and idealistic peace maker in a world torn by conflict, pain and suffering.
A worthy tribute to a man and his colleagues who risk their lives to bring us the true story of the world.
Intriguing Oscar-nominated documentary.
Both the film and Nachtwey's photos hammer home the grim reality of the world's gutters and battlefields, and will make you question what 'news' really is.
"War Photographer" is an intense, sometimes overwhelming, documentary about James Nachtwey, a noted photographer who specializes in conflict zones around the world. That alone makes his friends and colleagues(including Christiane Amanpour) very, very nervous about his well-being and he has been wounded on more than one occasion.(The documentary was made in 2001. According to Wikipedia, Nacthwey is still alive, thankfully.) They are also concerned with what in his personal life he may sacrificed in the name of his career. From all of what he has seen, including the view of the Brooklyn Bridge from his apartment and both the best and worst of humanity, and accomplished in bringing those images to the general public, it is safe to say that this is probably the life he wanted for himself since he started out in the wake of the Vietnam War when he noticed that photographs could tell the truth that the government did not want told.(More recently, the government has fought not to have the photographs of abused captives and caskets of returning soldiers released.) Along with photographing the results of atrocities in Kosovo and Rwanda, there is also footage of Nachtwey photographing a clash in the West Bank where he is tear gased and a sulfur mine in Indonesia. Kudos to the video cameraman on this footage, as there is also video footage shot directly from his camera to show exactly what is in his line of vision. That's not to mention the superb edit from one train in Indonesia to another in Hamburg, connecting the world. In a more general fashion, "War Photographer" is very insightful about the profession and dispels a good deal of the myths surrounding it. But it wrongfully scapegoats escapism as a reason why people do not care. We all need to escape occasionally from the real world(nobody needs reality television, however), just as long as that is balanced with some hard news. From a human rights point of view, the trick is to find a way to engage the average person in what is happening around the world on an everyday basis and these images might be the best way to do that.
Super Reviewer
There are no approved quotes yet for this movie.
View All