Simultaneously melodramatic and emotionally inert, this story of a quartet of photographers who documented the viciously bloody conflict between ANC and Inkhata supporters in the lead-up to South Africa's first free elections in 1994 is like an action photo with all the life airbrushed out of it.
If its raw material were not so solemn, its myriad implausibilities would be laughable: real press photographers don't drive through riot zones with their camera bags in the back seat; they don't go out at night without any camera gear; and when the day's over they certainly don't have one beer and go home.
But the film is more deeply and problematically inauthentic. It tells us nothing about its context (except that Zulus and Xhosas hate each other), presumably because gibbering savages have more screen appeal than political agendas. Meanwhile the photographers' ethical challenges are addressed in clumsy asides and when the film asks us to feel their pain, we don't feel anything for them at all because they've sold themselves as blokes having fun.
The club of the title was the name applied by another journalist to Greg Marinovich (Philippe), Kevin Carter (Kitsch), Ken Oosterbroek (Rautenbach) and Joao Silva (Van Jaarsvelt) and it must have been a wild ride they were on. Certainly some of the crowd scenes and action sequences are well discharged.
But director Silver's script is clunky and schematic, saddling the characters with reams of expository dialogue in which they explain to each other stuff they would naturally know but we do not, which makes for a rather plodding experience. One photographer actually tells another that "it's all about reading the moment".
