Music, Style & Culture

Machine Gun Preacher

Gerard Butler does his best Oscar-baiting turn as the complex Sam Childers.

Released in cinemas 2nd November 2011.

One of those incredible true stories you couldn't make up, here is the earnest account of Sam Childers, the "machine gun preacher" of the title.

Gerard Butler does his best serious-face, Oscar-baiting turn as the complex Childers. A former drug-dealing, violent gang biker, he found religion and became a volatile rescuer of orphaned children in Southern Sudan, fighting against the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).

Monster's Ball and Finding Neverland director Marc Forster follows up his messy Bond outing Quantum of Solace, but still can't get back on his feet as a compelling storyteller. The incredibly complex life of Childers is portrayed as too black and white, too simplified, with his religious epiphany fleeting. So choppy is the film, there's little time for Butler's admirable performance to stop and breathe. There's no denying the power of the subject, and Forster is at least sensitive when he needs to be. However, at times the film can be as subtle as a brick, thanks to Jason Keller's screenplay and Butler's limitations.

At least Childers isn't romanticised; he's portrayed warts'n'all, and the film is low on melodrama, bar some over-egging in the church scenes (close your ears for the wince-inducing choir girl). We first meet Sam swaggering out of prison into the arms of his wife Lynn (Michelle Monaghan - in no universe is she believable as a biker's wife and former stripper). Eager to get back to his gangland ways he is back on the smack with his best friend Donnie (Michael Shannon, riveting as usual) and raising hell. With Lynn having found God during Sam's incarceration, her husband converts after his aggression gets the better of him in one shocking scene.

In the space of about five screen minutes, Childers then becomes a missionary in South Sudan, channelling all his rage against the LRA. He leaves his family for months at a time to build orphanages, teaming up with the Sudan People's Liberation Army to round up dispossessed, at risk children. Constantly staring down the barrel of a gun, it's not long before Childers' way with a weapon comes in handy.

It's a film that could've been something incredible in a bolder director's hands, and as the real footage in the end credits prove, Childers would've made a charismatic documentary subject. It's also interesting to imagine what Machine Gun Preacher would've turned out like with the intense Shannon in the lead, internalising the ridiculously brave, foolhardy and stubborn Childers.

With all the best intentions, it can't fully avoid the "white man to the rescue" effect, but is thankully never as patronising as this year's The Help. More attention to Sudan's political make-up would've have been appreciated, with a lack of focus on LRA warlord Joseph Kony. As it is, the film is a stepping stone to discovering the extraordinary work of Childers and his mission.

Rating: 6/10