Machine Gun Preacher might surprise you. It exposes you to a bounty of different worlds you may not expect to see together in one movie. Based on the true life stories of the real Machine Gun Preacher, Sam Childers, the movie takes you from the story of a drug-abusing hot-head named Crazy Horse to the story of a transformed Christian hillbilly named Sam to the story of an angelic missionary of Southern Sudan named the White Preacher to the story of the obsessed vigilante who knows his guns named the Machine Gun Preacher. It takes you from the trailer park to suburbia to the African bush and back. Along the way, you have to take the evidence that the movie gives you and figure out which one of these men is all good, all evil or which combination is the best.
The movie does a great job with pushing its social commentary in between action scenes which keep the audience entertained and puts butts in seats. A movie about any of the aforementioned subjects alone wouldn’t do as well as this movie as a whole. However, with saying that, this movie goes through some weird phases of pace where it moves entirely too slow and switches gears way too fast. Even though the movie is slow in the beginning, I enjoyed that they took their time painting a rugged portrait of who Sam originally was. Obviously the title of Machine Gun Preacher is an oxymoron (well not really when you think of how war and religion are linked, but the ideological notion is supposed to be) and so is Sam. Do you agree with killing for the greater good? Doing anything it takes? The film gives you the angles on both sides and trust me, it’s a hard question to answer while walking out after this movie.
Gerard Butler with the real life Machine Gun Preacher Sam Childers
You would think this film might be preachy and has a hidden religious agenda. Thankfully, that’s not the case. They put enough church scenes to give you an idea of how Sam was inspired and then took the word into his own hands, but didn’t try to convert you to Christianity while you were trapped in the theater. They also didn’t hold anything back or hide any disturbing images because congregations might be watching the film. Quickly, you learn, through the cut scenes of Crazy Horse’s wild life and the docile church setting that Machine Gun Preacher ain’t a Sunday School movie…it’s super legit and will bring out the emotions in you. The movie is not for the faint of heart as it shows you, really shows you, accounts of what is going on in Sudan. Burning villages, torturing innocent, kids with guns, lost limbs and pieces…it’s all there.
Where's Waldo?
Gerard Butler is Sam Childers, an amazing man no matter how you see him, who takes it upon himself to help the kidnapped and abused children of Southern Sudan. The struggle isn’t his but he makes it his own. Through the phases of his life, you can see his personality and how he’s prone to downward spirals. Butler does a fantastic job depicting this and the emotions that go along with each step. For a biker dude who wouldn’t really show that much emotion, Butler was able to balance the extremes and show just enough to get the point across. The rest of the cast is pretty much split between his two to three lives. You have his home life with wife Lynn (Michelle Monaghan), daughter Paige (Ryan Campos (younger Paige), Madeline Carroll (older Paige)) and mother Daisy (Kathy Baker). Then you have his missionary life in Africa with Deng (Souleymane Sy Savane) and the children of Sudan. And then you have Donnie (Michael Shannon) who continually reminds him of his original sinful life with drugs, anger and a blind eye to right or wrong.
African Rambo
Showing the differences between these lives was easy for the film since they were so different. Imagine a phone conversation between Sam in the wilderness of dusty Africa where they have little to nothing and Lynn shopping in a ridiculously large supermarket with everything she would ever want at her fingertips. However, it was interesting to see how different Sam was in Africa and America and how he carried his emotional problems between the two. You began to get remnants from the beginning of the movie in the end and thought he had never found God or learned his lesson in the first place. The movie does run a bit long but they tie it together pretty well. I appreciate movies which bring real problems to the attention of the masses. Hopefully audiences will learn about some of the problems countries like Sudan are going through right now. I can’t say Machine Gun Preacher was a great movie but it was entertaining at times while still being informative and eye-opening.
Let me start by saying: Wow. Every aspect of this movie was great – the story, the visuals, the music, the characters, the whole package. This is DreamWorks Animation’s best work yet. The title of this movie, How To Train Your Dragon, does not do it justice as there is so much more to the movie. You go in to the movie not knowing what to expect, which may be a good thing, because by the end, you’re blown away. It’s a story about a young Viking unlike all the rest of the Viking town since he’s not blood hungry for dragon slaying. Where he’s from, hunting and killing dragons is the way of life and everybody expects each other to do the same. To make things worse, his dad is the head honcho in town who is a bit embarrassed that his son hasn’t turned out like himself: all muscles with guts and glory on the side. Instead, Hiccup (yes, his name is Hiccup) is a small toothpick with a brain on his shoulders. He likes to tinker and make things; he’s an engineer at heart. He doesn’t fit in with everybody else but that’s all he wants – to be like everybody else, or at least that’s what he thinks.
