A lot of us take the basic safety of our jobs for granted. The vast majority of people don't have to worry about being shot at or bombed during their nine to five office shifts or their graveyard shifts in the factory or warehouse. Yeah, every once in a while you might slip or lift something wrong but it's not like you have to worry about incoming grenades too often – but some people do have to be concerned with these types of occupational hazards. Journalists, when visiting war torn nations or distressed areas suffering from political unrest sometimes end up the unwitting victims and with forty six reporters killed in the line of duty between January of 2002 and April of 2003, that's the heart of this documentary from Anchor Bay/Camera Planet. Focusing in on six separate incidents, it's a harrowing film that sheds some light on something that seems to go fairly unnoticed these days.

Daniel Pearl: The most famous of the victims in this movie, Daniel Pearl worked for the Wall Street Journal and will always be remembered for the fact that he was kidnapped by Islamic terrorists who in turn released video footage of his decapitation at their hands. This one made news all over the world. Thankfully the filmmakers have had the good sense not to include the execution footage in this documentary.

Raffaele Ciriello: This Italian reporter was shot in a skirmish with Israeli soldiers and Palestinian military in the Palestinian territories. The Israeli soldiers thought he was a Palestinian, not a reporter.

Edgar Damalerio: A writer for a Philippine newspaper who was killed in a police ambush after opening the case against the crooked local officials who they were moving in on.

David Bloom: One of the more high profile cases represented on this DVD, Bloom had covered the move in of US forces on Iraq in 2002 and it was on the outskirts of Baghdad where he died in the field of pulmonary embolism (or, blood clot) at the age of 39. With Bloom being with a major network, NBC, during a time when everyone was watching the news, more people paid attention to his death than to some of the other people discussed in this movie.

Tim Lopes: A reporter for a Brazilian television channel, Lopes' last story was one that focused on the slums in Rio, the notorious 'City Of God' and it landed him in some hot water with those who didn't like what he found. The results? He was kidnapped and tortured to death.

Taras Protsyuk: Another victim of the recent Iraq war, Taras was a camera man for a Ukrainian new channel who was killed with American tanks destroyed the hotel that he was staying in.

Each of the stories in the documentary are moving and tragic. With narration from such luminaries are Tom Brokaw and Walter Cronkite and hosted by Anderson Cooper of CNN, the film doesn't so much try to solve the problem as it does to serve as a tribute to those who died by explaining who they were and what they did in their lifetimes. By using examples from all over the world the movie does a fine job of taking a look at this trend, which for some reason seems to be growing at a rather rapid pace when the statistics are laid out for you.

Video:

The 1.33.1 fullframe image is decent when you take into account that a lot of the footage seen in this movie is taken from archival news broadcasts and was rarely shot under ideal conditions. There are a few bits and pieces that look a little worse for wear but those instances aside, the rest of the image is pretty stable and doesn't look too bad at all. The colors are fairly bright and skin tones look dead on. Black levels pixelate a little here and there and, yes, if you look for it there's some edge enhancement and line shimmering but for a low budget documentary that was shot on digital video, the movie looks decent enough.