But if the movie is based on a book about real-life people, you expect it to be imbued with a semblance of verisimilitude and respect for the lives that are being celebrated in it.

Which is why I have a bone to pick with the makers of The Bang Bang Club, which premiered in Sandton this week and is based on the book of the same name.

I shall start with the small matter of how photographers operate in a news-gathering set-up. A photographer - no matter how good or experienced - is usually paired with a reporter. After all, that's what a story package is: words and pictures.

Yes, there will be occasions when a photographer or writer chooses to go on his own. But, in The Bang Bang Club, not in a single instance do any of the photographers speak to, let alone work with, a journalist. That doesn't ring true of how The Star, or any other newspaper, operates.

Secondly, and related to that, I found it highly dishonest, if not downright arrogant, of the filmmakers to portray Greg Marinovich, Joao Silva, Ken Oosterbroek and Kevin Carter as know-it-all white guys who, with no prior knowledge of the geography of the townships or even the slightest grasp of an African language, became overnight warriors who prowled, with careless abandon, the maze-like township streets.

Not once do we see them enlisting the help of an interpreter or a guide to negotiate their passage through the blood-drenched streets. An almost unintelligible greeting, "Press, mf'ethu!" (we are the press, brother!) wouldn't cut it with an angry horde.

It is a truth that will be attested to by many that these photographers, crazy and brave as they were, did enlist the help of journalists and photographers who spoke the lingo and knew the lay of the land. A slight nod to some of these journalists and other intermediaries would have taken the credibility of the story a notch higher.

Allow me a moment of self-indulgence: as one who has also published an autobiographical account of that period, I realise that, in telling the story, I might have come across as too concerned with my own demons at the expense of telling the "entire" story in a balanced and sympathetic manner.

Autobiography is about the self and how outside events impacted on the self. I have defended myself by pointing out that my book was not about the struggle and the violence that accompanied it, but about how a young journalist survived the emotional trauma and the bloodshed of the times.

Members of the Bang Bang Club and their supporters can cite the same excuse: they are merely telling their own story, not the "entire" story.

However, let's agree that the subject of an autobiography does not exist in a vacuum - his or her life is touched by the people and the circumstances surrounding him.

To illustrate the point: the ultimate story of Nelson Mandela will not be about the man's heroism, but about the comrades, the communities (black and white), the family members and jailers who shaped him.

Therefore, it sickened me to see Alf Kumalo, one of the greats of SA photography, making a cameo appearance as an avuncular has-been whose only contribution to the narrative is giving the Marinovich character a warm welcome to The Star's photographic department. And - ah, yes - he also gets to admonish a young township radical who rails against members of the Bang Bang Club "profiting" from the suffering of black victims.

According to the movie, Kumalo did not share a single nugget of photographic wisdom with the young bucks.

Those who worked at The Star, and other photographers who interacted with the Bang Bang Club in the field, will tell you tales to the contrary.

Those of us who have been around for some time in this crazy trade of words and pictures know that Oosterbroek, for one, spent many hours learning from Kumalo - about the finer points of photography, but also survival tips in the hot spots where the younger man was robbed of his wife's car, was shot and generally abused by fighters across the divide.

There were others too: photographers Walter Dhladhla, Elmond Jiyane and Juda Ngwenya, to mention a few, who, because of their knowledge of the townships and the languages spoken there, were always eager to help photographers and journalists not familiar with the terrain.

Now we get to what should be the heart of the movie: photographers and their craft. A young personseeing for the first time the world of photography through this movie would be disappointed.

I have nothing against the embellishment of a story sometimes, if only to give it a dramatic edge.

But to reduce real-life people to Hollywood caricatures is sacrilegious, especially if some of them are still alive. Members of the club are reduced to junkies who drank, jumped from bed to bed and were lost in a haze of drugs - and occasionally took pictures.

This is an insult not only to the photographers and their families, but to colleagues and admirers who can speak until the cows come home about the oeuvre that these guys created.

But the movie has its poignant moment, a vignette I thought the makers would try to avoid. It's been a hot potato for some time.

It is about Carter taking a picture of a starving child being stalked by a vulture in South Sudan. That haunting photograph won Carter a Pulitzer Prize after it was published in the New York Times. But it also led to his demise: issues of ethics and related moral considerations were raised.

The main question raised on the opinion pages of newspapers all over the world, including the New York Times, was simply this: having shot the picture, why did Carter not extend the milk of human kindness towards the helpless child - at least carry her to the nearby feeding station?

His response - that his job was simply to take pictures, not to help human beings who were fodder for his lens - was rejected by most.

Carter, who had been buoyant after winning the prize, succumbed to bouts of depression and self-loathing. So he killed himself. That vignette is tackled with due sensitivity, candour and respect lacking in the rest of the movie.

This was not meant to be a review of the film, but a sad reflection on a wasted opportunity at telling the real tale about challenges facing journalists covering the hot spots of the 1990s; and how your ordinary burning township became the crucible in which were fashioned many lasting relationships of trust and respect between the journalists and township folk.

In these days of threatened media tribunals, that mutual respect is fading away, and the movie only helps to deepen the betrayal.