An Unlikely Weapon - 3 smiles

Photographer Eddie Adams is the subject of director Susan Morgan Cooper’s documentary about the man credited with taking the picture that helped bring an end to the Vietnam War.  Many, including Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings, maintain that the photo Adams took in Saigon on Feb. 1, 1968 of a Saigon police chief executing a Vietcong prisoner helped end the Vietnam War by providing a graphic image of that brutal conflict. But Adams’ own words illustrate his dissatisfaction with the photo (it wasn’t perfect) and how he regretted taking it. Nonetheless, that was just one of many photos Adams took in his illustrious career, spanning 13 wars, six presidents, and countless celebrities.

“An Unlikely Weapon” employs talking heads, archival film clips and photos taken by and interviews with Adams, who died in 2004 of ALS.  The result is an interesting portrait of a nonconformist, a man who traveled his own path. In one amusing anecdote, he refuses to take any nonsense from Fidel Castrol and ends up going duck hunting with the Cuban dictator. Eddie Adams also created the Eddie Adams Workshop (Barnstorm Workshop), an intense four-day gathering of the top photography professionals along with 100 carefully selected students. The workshop is tuition-free and the students are chosen on the merit of their portfolios. “An Unlikely Weapon” conveys the deep humanism of Adams’s work from the close-ups of Vietnamese boat people to the human rights book “Speak Truth to Power” he made with Kerry Kennedy. 6/24/09