Finally! This is the first trailer that has a consistant narrative throughout and actually makes me want to see this film. There's action, drama, and romance all wrapped together with a great soundtrack.
How do I know there's a great sound track? The trailer starts off with the sounds of nature and a montage of close up shots of a camera while a photographer takes photos. Reminds me of the drug scene from "Requiem for a dream" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCQdmYNSSMU). Then we get hard white flash to the camera tracking a car while a rock & roll and roll song plays under it. Those shots and the juxtaposition from nature sounds to rock music lets me know immediately that this film is going to be butting up various realities against each other.
At 00:13 We're shown a man driving, presumably the photographer, and we can surmise he's on his way to shoot something out of the ordinary, something that's worth speeding for.
00:14 and we're shown two mobs confronting each other and photographers taking pictures.
00:15 and we're introduced to the two main protagonists played by Ryan Phillippe and Taylor Kitsch.
By 00:28 we know Phillipe's character has a job as a photographer, the photographers there like to drink, and the ones he's joining up with are "crazies".
By 00:30 the group is in a van heading into a mob and one of their windows is busted out by an activist.
At this point I'm ready to watch the movie. The characters, conflict, location, and story have all been laid out. This is a fantastic trailer, well edited and with a consistent narrative. The amazing thing is that it gets better. Now that the main points have been shown the editor can deepen our understanding of the characters and the conflict in the remaining minute and a half.
Then they play out the race card with a narrator saying "You're lucky, 'cus you're white, you can go anywhere" while a a mob of black South Africans get shot at by white South Africans from an armoured vehicle.
At 00:41 we have a naked woman presumably motioning for a man to join her in bed.
Okay, so now let's count our interest zones: Alcohol: Check, Violence: Check, Racism: Check, Sex: Check.
00:44 and we have a woman saying she doesn't date photographers while Philleppe's character is kissing her body. She then goes on to list the issue with dating photographers while we're shown shots to back this up. (the main characters jumping into a warmly lit swimming hole-cue memories of being a kid again. Rock music plays underneath this. Then Phillippe's character risks his life to run and get Coke's while being shot at-I hope Coke paid a lot for that shot.
Then at 00:54 we're taken to images of the dark side after the woman says then there's the bad stuff too. Mobs runing, people getting beaten up, people asking for photos not to be taken.
01:00 - Phillepe's character says he wants to tell the Black man's side of the story and he's told it doesn't matter. White man's photos are for white man's purposes.
Innocents are getting beaten up. Q: "What if he's not guilty." A: "Doesn't Matter."
Titles "One picture can change the world". Titles all come on with a solid audio smash to back them up.
Photographer questioning himself: "They're right you know. It's our job to sit there and watch people die.
Women: "They're too graphic. You know we're not going to be able to use the pictures." Phillepe: "Then what am I doing out there?" Video: man being burned alive.
Black South African: "The government is using it to show how we animals can not govern ourselves.
End Narrative: "I'm haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain". The video under this audio isn't quite as strong. Maybe they should have held onto the most disturbing shot to display at the end before they do the epic beat to the end plate with the movie title on it. There is a good montage of a dead man being walked over by a mob and then they cut to a scene where he's in the same position but alive in the viewfinder of the camera, but I have a feeling that the only people that will notice that are people like me that are watching the trailer for the umpteenth time while they review it.
Visuals: Excellent in a gritty, dark, natural lighting sort of way. If you hate racoon eyes in films you won't like the lighting. The cinematographer obviously tried, and succeeded, to make every frame of this film to look like a journalistic photo taken in the field. The lighting and framing alone is worth going to see this film for.
Music & Audio Effects: The trailer's score was pitch perfect and I expect nothing less from the film itself.
Acting: Overall it looks good, but Philleppe seemed a bit too ernest near the end and he doesn't quite sell his South African accent, at least not in the clips used for the trailer. Hopefully I'll loose myself in the film when I see it in theatres and not notice the accent issues quite as much.
Overall: It's a buddy film about coming of age through the lens of camera during the fall of apartheid in South Africa. It's easily the best trailer I've seen this year, but it did lag a little right at the end.
The big question is-am I going to see it? Yes. The bigger question is-am I going to recommend it to my friends? Absolutely.
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