One of the best things about airplanes is they give you a chance to get through an entire movie without being interrupted by the phone, an email, or something else. Knowing I had some road time coming up, before my recent trip I rented Machine Gun Preacher
In the film, Sam Childers is played by Gerard Butler, one of my favorites among currently active actors. The character of Childers starts the movie off as a thoroughly unlikable scumbag, he’s borderline abusive to his family, addicted to heroin, and generally an all-around bad guy. A huge part of what made the movie so compelling was following his character arc as he goes from criminal scumbag to impassioned Christian rescuing Africans. What I found the most interesting about the character is when he reaches rock bottom – and it’s not what when you’d expect, but rather it’s because the character seems to replace one destructive addiction to heroin for a destructive addiction to Africa.
As an humorous note, the “enemy” in the film is generally the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA. You may be familiar with the LRA from the recent “Kony 2012″ nonsense that was going around the internet. It seems that Sam Childers has done more to actually help the children of Africa than those worthless toolbags at Invisible Children ever have, or will do. That is one of the central themes of the movie as well – whether or not bringing more violence to a war torn region is the solution. The end of the movie has a quote from the real Sam Childers about his methods, which he really doesn’t make any apologies. Without going too deep into the geopolitical situation in Africa, I am generally in favor of people who rescue orphans from slavery and torture, and I also award bonus points if in so doing they shoot some slaver/LRA-types in the face. I would imagine that the thousands of children rescued and helped by Sam Childers’ organization in Africa wouldn’t have any issues with his methods either.
Back to the movie, the guns were mostly what you’d expect for a movie set in Sudan. A various mix of AKs, a couple of FALs, and some random AK-style guns. There is an MG42 in there as well, which makes an appearance during one of the few brief but intense fight scenes in the movie.
All told, I really enjoyed Machine Gun Preacher. I actually started out not liking the movie, and the first 30 minutes or so was difficult to get through. Butler’s acting carries the character of Childers through an intense personal story line which drives the action of the movie at a relentless tempo. I would recommend this movie to anyone looking for a compelling drama; or for anyone who wants to watch King Leonidas shoot LRA people in the face with an AK.
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