Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Armed Only with a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud’ on HBO Max, a Short Doc About a Journalist Killed in the Russo-Ukrainian War

By John Serba

Armed Only with a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud (now streaming on HBO Max) is a heartwrenching tribute to a journalist who died doing what some may describe as “the lord’s work.” While covering the war in Ukraine in 2022, Renaud was shot in the neck by Russian soldiers who deliberately targeted journalists, killing him and wounding his fellow photographer Juan Arredondo. The 39-minute short Armed Only with a Camera is Renaud’s final documentary film credit, alongside his journalist brother Craig Renaud, who applies the very same principles to it that Brent carried with him on many dangerous assignments: an unblinking, but empathetic approach to the innocent civilians who suffer so greatly during wartime.

ARMED ONLY WITH A CAMERA: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF BRENT RENAUD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We meet Brent Renaud as he trudges through a shallow, fast-moving river on the border of Guatemala and Mexico. He films a 16-year-old boy as he makes the arduous trek from his former home of Honduras to what he hopes is his future home, the United States. The boy says he has no parents and no future in Honduras, but believes the U.S. will be a place where he can build a new family and find some hope. Brent reaches a place where he can no longer follow the kid, so he says goodbye and that he hopes to see him “down the line” somewhere. 

Seven years later, Brent is in Ukraine, visiting the rubble that used to be an apartment building. Survivors sift through the destruction. One man looks into a crater and chokes back tears as he tells Brent’s camera that this hole used to be his home. Another doesn’t mince words: “Curse the Russians,” he bellows. “Not the Russian people – curse the government. All Putin’s men.” This was in the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Not too much later, Brent and other journalists were wearing their press vests when Russian soldiers ambushed them. He took a bullet in the neck. His partner Arredondo was also shot, but did his best to staunch Brent’s bleeding. It wasn’t enough to save him.

We see Brent lifeless on the ground, in some detail. It seems… insensitive. Until his brother Craig arrives to pick up the body. They grew up in Arkansas, Craig following Brent’s lead, chasing a dream of being documentary filmmakers. Craig wasn’t with him in Ukraine, but they worked on many previous projects together: They covered the Arkansas National Guard on a war tour of Iraq (for the Discovery series Off to War). The earthquake in Haiti. The refugee crisis in Central America. Gang/cartel violence in Mexico. The war in Afghanistan. We see footage from all these conflicts, much of it harrowing, rife with violence and death. Craig weeps over his brother’s body in the casket, then picks up a camera and captures footage of Brent’s face, pockmarked with small wounds, his neck stitched together where the bullet hit him. A voice from off-camera asks Craig why he’s doing this. “I knew this is what Brent would be doing,” Craig replies. “He always felt it was important not to hide from the reality of what violence and war does to people.”

Photo: HBO

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Dissident, the 2020 documentary detailing how the Saudi Arabian government arranged to murder Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. 

Performance Worth Watching: You have to admire Criag Renaud for having the mental fortitude to make this film, putting a capper on his brother’s life’s work. 

Memorable Dialogue: A wounded Somalian man in an infirmary calls Brent to his bed and tells him, “The way you’re holding that camera, you’re really doing it from your heart. You and I can change this world if we want to.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: There isn’t a single frill or accoutrement to Armed Only with a Camera, only an empathetic point-of-view towards – well, everything in front of it, for people who lost homes, limbs, friends or children, for Brent himself, for the shattered Craig, who embraces Arredondo in his hospital bed, the two men sharing their grief. Arredondo apologizes. Craig comforts him: “There was nothing anyone could do.” Other moments in the film are just as wrenching – an Iraqi woman telling Brent that her young son’s genitals had to be amputated after an attack, an Afghani man who lost his wife and children from a U.S. bomb intended for terrorists, holding his hands out, palms up, asking, “What am I going to do?” 

These are real people experiencing real emotions, and telling their stories is an act of real journalism that has no use for ideology, only humanity. Brent’s work was dangerous; it’s telling that his autism made him deeply uncomfortable at a cocktail party, but calm and collected in a warzone with bullets flying and bombs going off. We see Brent at home with his beloved dog; we see his mother and sister weep as his coffin, draped with an American flag, is removed from an airplane; we see a crowd gather at his funeral, where a Chicago man stands up and “speaks from the heart” – Brent had once shot a film about community programs in Chicago that aimed to undercut gang-related shootings, and he pays respects to a man who sought out meaningful stories no matter where they played out. 

The purpose of the film isn’t self-righteous. It’s not an overt screed about the sanctity and purpose of the free press, although that idea lurks in the subtext. Quite simply, Armed Only with a Camera applies the same journalistic principles to Brent’s story as he applied to others’. “What he cared about most were the people caught in the middle,” Craig says, undoubtedly all too aware of the tragic irony that his brother became one of those people.

Our Call: Principled journalism about a principled journalist. Don’t be surprised if Armed Only with a Camera earns an Oscar nomination. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.