When Childers (Gerard Butler, The Bounty Hunter), a hard core biker, is released from prison, he comes home to his beaten-down trailer to discover his junkie stripper wife, Lynn (Michelle Monaghan, Gone Baby Gone) has found the Lord. While he initially rejects her new lifestyle, a life-changing event forces him to come to terms with his life and he repents. Together with Donnie (the completely brilliant Michael Shannon), childhood best friend and former druggie, Sam gets himself cleaned up and starts his own construction business, making a nice life for himself, wife Lynn and young daughter Paige (Madeline Carroll). After hearing a missionary talk about his work in Africa, Sam decides that he wants to go to Sudan for a few weeks to help out with construction. Once he arrives, however, he witnesses the devastation and finds that he can’t leave without doing more. He meets a man named Deng (Souleymane Sy Savane) who shows him what really goes on behind the scenes and explains the horrors visited upon the young children as their villages are burned and their parents killed by members of a rebel militant group led by a dangerous man named Kony. Sam decides to stay and build an orphanage for the children, a place where they can feel safe at night.
As the months and years wear on and Sam goes back and forth between Pennsylvania and Sudan, he finds it difficult to raise the money to continue his mission in Sudan and he finds himself drifting further and further from his family. As Sam becomes more fully immersed in the life in Sudan, his family continues his work and ministry at home in Pennsylvania, although Sam seems more concerned about the children in Africa and makes decisions that drastically affect his family at home. Even Sam's own followers in Sudan begin to doubt him as he seems more intent on murdering the rebels at every opportunity, instead of simply helping the children. It is not without warrant that he earns the title Machine Gun Preacher. But Sam is a light in the darkness for the children he cares for and he continues this work today, amongst the horrors that still go on in his region of Sudan.
Machine Gun Preacher is not a happy movie nor is it a film for everyone, but it’s an important and moving story that needs to be told. I liked that they didn't paint Sam Childers as a saint. He is an unlikeable person when we first meet him and he is human. Even though he becomes a Christian, a preacher and a missionary, when times get tough, he strikes out in anger, drinks, fights, etc. He is a changed man, but yet he is still the same in some aspects. It is this strength and tenacity that allows him to exist and do what he does in Sudan to this day. I must admit that the horrors in Sudan were not at the top of my priority list and I really didn’t know much about what was going on. Machine Gun Preacher is quite enlightening and disturbing at the same time.
Special features include a discussion with Producer/Director Mark Forster with some insight into the making of the film, plus a featurette on the music, and a music video by Chris Cornell. While I found these a little dry, it was really cool to get some background on the man behind the moniker. Also, if you watch through the end credits, you’ll see stills and footage of Sam Childers in action, which is also worth checking out. While I didn't notice anything visually spectacular about the film being in high def, everything looked crisp and clear and the surround sound action/gunfight sequences really popped.
Don't put this movie in if you are looking for a fun weekend movie. Watch it if you want to learn something about what goes on in someone else's backyard on the other side of the world and about the special man who is trying to make life better for those people.
