The Bang Bang Club is a biopic which tells the story of four young combat photojournalists- Greg Marinovich, Joao Silva, Kevin Carter, and Ken Oosterbroek.  The four young photographers are bonded by both their friendship and their sense of purpose to tell the truth by virtue of their cameras.

The true story takes place within the townships of South Africa during the Apartheid period, particularly between 1990 and 1994.  In 1994, these men risked their lives to tell the stories of brutality and violence which occured during the first free elections of post-Apartheid South Africa.

Greg Marinovice (Ryan Phillippe) is the new guy on the team of The Star, a South-African newspaper and quickly becomes known as a fearless photoreporter who will go trough great lenghts to tell his story.  Greg goes from freelancer to star photojournalist at The Star after winning the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography in 1991 for his coverage of the killing of Lindsaye Tshabalala.  Greg struggles with his purpose as a photographer and is aided by his Photo Editor and love interest Robin Comley (Malin Akerman).

Meanwhile, fellow staff photographer Kevin Carter (Taylor Kitsch) struggles with drug abuse and ends up losing his job at The Star. Carter journeys to Southern Sudan and captures one of the most memorable shots of the decade, a starving child being stalked by a vulture in the foreground.  The vulture shot earned Carter the Pulitzer for Featured Photography in 1994.  This famous photograph also began to raise questions of ethics in journalism- should the photographer have helped the starving child, or is his job to take the shot and tell the story to the world?  This photograph, and the controversy it created is still hotly debated in journalism schools around the world to this day.

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