Review: McCullin Captures a Photojournalist’s View of Covering the World

“McCullin” takes a plain-spoken and direct approach to covering the career of the British photojournalist Don McCullin, a longtime correspondent for The Sunday Times. Mr. McCullin says he resists the label “war photographer,” which, to him, is “like being called a mercenary.”

Nevertheless, the movie charts the course of his career as he reflects on capturing strife in Berlin, Cyprus, Congo, Biafra, Vietnam, Cambodia, Lebanon and the United States, along with homelessness in his native London. The documentary pays tribute to his compositional skill and the derring-do of his access.

In interviews, Mr. McCullin, now 80, and Harold Evans, the former editor of The Sunday Times, help viewers appreciate the subtlety of Mr. McCullin’s eye — of how a dog out of place or a woman cowering in a doorway adds pathos to a scene. NY Times