The focus of the film is the story underlying the most influential and electrifying photograph to come out of the Vietnam War – the image of a South Vietnamese police officer shooting a Vietcong prisoner in the head – and how the picture transformed the lives of Eddie Adams, who captured the moment on film, and Nguyen Ngoc Loan, the man who pulled the trigger. Through a series of on-camera interviews with a number of Adams’ great contemporaries – people who knew him, experienced the crucible of Vietnam, and were chroniclers of, and commentators upon, that time – the film reveals the little known, and very surprising, back-story of the events leading up to the murder, and follows the complicated, conflicted lives led by Adams and Loan both before and after the photo transformed world opinion. Tying the narrative together – making it deeply personal – an on-camera actor performs compelling selections drawn from the journals Adams kept in Vietnam between 1966 and 1968. As well, our film uses Adams’ picture to launch a broader inquiry into our perception and understanding of the visual image. Is there something about that photo – about many such photos – we should know other than what we see? Finally, the film addresses the relevant fact that today, in an increasingly visual society, we rely heavily on images of every sort to communicate news and events around the world, yet our visual literacy remains surprisingly limited. In a world that runs the gamut from naivete to utter cynicism we need to at least ask questions about what it is we see. Featuring: Bob Schieffer, Morley Safer, James S. Robbins, Richard Pyle, Bill Eppridge, Hal Buell, Peter Arnett, Walter Anderson. With: Danny Burstein