Machine Gun Preacher Movie Review

WE THOUGHT “Machine Gun Preacher” is a B movie-action potboiler starring Gerard Butler whose movies seem to have steadily lost their luster after he made an impression in “300”. It turns out it’s based on the true story of Sam Childer’s autobiographical book, “Another Man’s War”. When the story starts in the 90s, Sam is just released from prison, a biker who’s into booze and drugs and frequently gets into brawls. His wife, Lyn (Michelle Monaghan), fetches him from jail and the first thing he does is to make out with her in their car. He gets mad when he learns that Lyn has left her job as a stripteaser because she now attends church regularly. At first, he resists Lyn’s invitation for him to also go to church but his personal problems get worse so he finally goes with her, accepts Jesus Christ as our savior and gets baptized. He soon becomes an evangelist himself, putting up a church for wayward people in their community.

Since he’s a builder, he’s invited to be part of a mission to southern Sudan to help rebuild the homes of the victims of the war there. He finds a friend in a member of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, Deng (Souleymane Savane). He learns that so many children are kidnapped and torn away from their parents and he becomes inspired to build an orphanage for them.

The movie does not present Sam as an angel out to rescue the oppressed people in Sudan. He’s actually more of an anti-hero and the movie doesn’t balk at presenting him as someone who can be selfish, somewhat obsessive and has an attitude problem that gets him into fights. His obsession to help out in the Sudan also takes its toll on his relationship with his wife and daughter.

The sequences showing unspeakable horrors of man’s inhumanity to man in the Sudan are truly disconcerting, just like what was shown in “Hotel Rwanda” in the tribal conflicts between Hutus and Tutsis. The movie is helmed by Marc Foster, who gave us the James Bond flick “Quantum of Solace”. Maybe because of his action background, there are many action sequences in “Machine Gun Preacher” involving gunfights, some of which manage to generate some suspense. But they don’t seem to be totally cohesive with the basic material and you’d think some of them were added just to justify the film’s title.

In the end, you somehow get the feeling that the movie is unfinished, maybe because the acts of violence in Sudan have not really ended up to now. But Gerald Butler does give a fairly impressive and impassioned performance as the sinner who gets his redemption from saving Sudanese orphans.