Eddie Adams made me weep long before I knew his name. With his camera he caught the faces of the ; the chilling execution of a handcuffed prisoner on a Saigon street caught in a split-second just as the bullet slammed against the helpless man’s head is the one that would change Adams’ life and the war along with it. Titled “Saigon Execution,” the 1968 photo would win him , but over the years much more of Adams’ work would move, shock, uplift, unite and sadden us, as we discover in Cooper’s love letter of a documentary, “An Unlikely Weapon.” Just about everyone starts smiling as they talk about Adams, a sardonic old soul even in his early years.
And Adams on camera doesn’t disappoint. He wears disdain like armor. His assessment of the Pulitzer photo? Badly composed, bad lighting.
He shrugs, he swears, he shakes his head in disgust. Yet you feel the caring behind the cursing. What his contemporaries saw was an artist’s eye.
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