Machine Gun Preacher

Machine Gun Preacher

Starring Gerard Butler, Michelle Monaghan, Michael Shannon, Madeline Carroll

Directed by Marc Forster

The Story:
In Pennsylvania, Sam Childers (Gerard Butler) is a motorcycle driving, beer drinking, fight-inducing man who's incarcerated for his crimes.  When he's released, he's reunited with his wife Lynn (Michelle Monaghan) and daughter Paige (Madeline Carroll), and immediately returns to his old ways with his fellow drug buddy Donnie (Michael Shannon), despite the fact that Lynn became a born again Christian while he was in prison.

After one particularly bad night, Sam goes to church with Lynn and his family, where he confesses his sins and becomes born again.  He's now a changed man, working a respectable job as a construction man, and overall has turned a new leaf.  When he hears about the plight of children in Sudan, he feels called to go there and use his construction know-how to good use.

Upon arriving, he discovers life there is even worse than he thought, as children are being kidnapped by the Lord's Resistance Army, and joins with the rebels known as the Sudan People's Liberation Army to protect the villages and protect the children by resorting to violence.  In the meantime, he also builds an orphanage for the children, but as money becomes scarce, he travels back to America to raise funds, but finds it more a challenge than fighting in Sudan.  Discouraged, he begins to wonder if it was all worth it.

The Synopsis:
Typically, Christian movies are a thing to be scoffed at and ridiculed, and for good reason: they're absolutely horrendous.  Kirk Cameron is one of the worst actors out there, and he keeps churning out awful film after awful film, and that's just starters.  Did you know there's a whole subgenre called Christian Thriller?  It exists, and is about as humorous as you'd think.  Most of the time, it takes someone outside the realm of Christianity to produce a decent Christian-centered movie, and while "Machine Gun Preacher" has a Christ-centric tale, it's by far anything you'd expect to see showing in your local congregation - unless it's heavily edited to about twenty minutes.

The film tells the true story of Sam Childers, who was formerly a bad boy outlaw who turned his life to God and chose to focus on serving Him by assisting the poor innocent children in Sudan.  You'd expect - as you see generic Christians do - to see him travel to Sudan and pass out papers as to how God loves them, give some kids a hug, maybe do some light construction and then fly home and never think of them again.  Instead, he travels to Sudan, builds an entire orphanage from scratch, and also takes up arms and ruthlessly murders anyone who threatens the childrens' lives.  Not exactly a message of love and peace, but still gets the message across.

It's interesting to see Sam's development through the film.  At first he only looks out for himself, but after his conversion he focuses on the needs of the children - at an almost narcissistic level.  It's pretty bad visually to show a white man from America coming to an African world and saving everyone, and at some points it seems that Sam feels he's the real savior of them all.  When he comes home, he hardly spends time with his family, as he's scrounging around trying to raise money for the Sudanese children.  His daughter wants a limo for prom, and he goes off on her desire for something that he thinks is wasteful.  He cusses people out, and becomes an all-around negative person to be around.  Yet when he's in Sudan, he becomes a virtually one-man wrecking crew, dispatching the bad guys left and right with barrage of bullets and missiles.  It's a weird dance he performs, one moment being hailed a hero then being portrayed as a villain.  Which one is the real Sam Childers?  Probably somewhere in-between.

Gerard Butler does what he does best - delivers a gruff performance with loads of violence and never a hint of subtlety.  He is the main show in the film, and everyone else is just window dressing.  Michelle Monaghan is underused as Lynn, as she basically becomes the typical doting wife who stands by her man no matter what (well, mostly).  Michael Shannon's talents are terribly wasted as Donnie, Sam's former best friend who's also a drug addict trying to clean his act.  Still, whenever he's on the screen, he steals the show.

Ultimately, the film tries to show the plight of the children of Sudan, ones we've seen on screens so many times we've become desensitized to their trials because they're so far away, and we have our own problems.  To this end, director Marc Forster succeeds by showing how terrible the kids are treated over there, how they're ripped from the families (and often forced to kill their own families), turned into soldiers (or sex slaves if they're female), and who are murdered in the most brutal fashion.  It's uncomfortable to watch, especially since you know that it's more than just a movie - it's what's really happening.

The Summary:
"Machine Gun Preacher" shows the plight of the Sudanese children through the eyes of a reformed American man, and is filled with violence and even some emotional moments, but ultimately becomes a one-man vigilante movement against an overseas army.

The Score: B+