Film Review: Machine Gun Preacher (2011)

MACHINE GUN PREACHER (2011)
Director: Marc Forster
Writer: Jason Keller (Based on the life of Sam Childers)

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

Some films I have seen this year that I don’t like have been boring (“The Smurfs Movie”) and often to the point of not caring what was going on (“Anonymous”, “Fast Five”). While “Shark Night 3D” was disappointing and “Bridesmaids”, “Your Highness” and “The Hangover Part II” failed to elicit a laugh most of the time, “Machine Gun Preacher” is a kind of film that while perhaps well made – mostly of the time – it goes down a path that I find troubling.

An opening prologue set in the Sudan in 2003, where a young boy is forced to beat his mother to death.

We then go to Pennsylvania, “a few years earlier” (?) where Sam Childers (Gerard Butler, “300”, “Gamer”, “Law Abiding Citizen”) is released from prison and returns home (after having car sex with his wife Lynn, played by Michelle Monaghan). It turns out Lynn has quit her job as a stripper – much to Sam’s anger – and “found Jesus”. Sam goes on a raid to get some drugs with his junkie buddy Donnie (Michael Shannon) and here we find out how bad a person Sam is: he swears, does drugs, uses a gun, and uses racist language when threatening a black man. When Lynn finds Sam trying to wash some blood off his hands, he asks her to help him. Next thing we know, he’s going to Church (as opposed to Lynn calling the police over his apparent murder or manslaughter) and Sam soon accepts an alter call and is baptised. So far, so “conversion story”.

Sam’s lifestyle changes include working as a construction worker, wearing nicer shirts than his biker get-up (the mullet goes too) and saving Donnie from drugs in a scene showing his withdrawal that recalls the similarly “gritty Christian-themed” film “The Cross and the Switchblade”.

Sam is inspired by a guest speaker to do work in Uganda. When voluntarily visiting a “war zone”, Sam finds children gathering outside to sleep in safety (“night commuters”) and invites them in doors. Back at home, Sam stays up all night and claims to have had a vision from the Lord to build a Church across the street that will “not turn away prostitutes or junkies” – the problem being that there was no evidence that that’s what the Church he attended was doing. They seemed a nice bunch, wearing suits etc. and saying “Amen” to everything. Sam wants to build an orphanage for the children in Uganda and returns there. However during its construction, an attack leaves it destroyed and when he calls Lynn, she tells him to rebuild it.

Sam’s work builds him a reputation as a “white preacher” (never, as the title suggests, a “machine gun preacher”) and his dedication to helping the kids leads him on a path towards obsession (maybe the first clue was building them a play park). It begins to draw him away from his family (his first trip means he has to miss his daughter Paige’s (Madeline Carroll) play, which he has recorded on a camcorder.

On one trip, Sam and the men he’s working with find a large group of children and there are too many to take all of them in their truck so they would have to return for them. But when they do, they find the remaining kids dead and on his return home, Sam seeks out money for a new truck, taking his wife and daughter away from a party when discreetly given only $150 of the $5000 he wants. He given goes down the “dark” path again when he swears at his daughter, who asks him about hiring a limo and he goes berserk when told “You love them black babies more than me!” Leaping to her defence, Donnie is told that he is a “stray dog”. Next thing we know, he’s back on drugs while Sam is (*gasp!*) drinking. It does not end that as he sells his business and looks for money in a safe – Lynn has to tell him their daughter’s date of birth in order to get the combination – in order to pay for the truck.

A possible issue here is whether Sam is doing the “right” thing or whether the film thinks he is. Is he following Jesus, who said that a “man’s enemies will be the members of his own household” or the disciples, who complained that the money bought from the perfume used to anoint Jesus’ feet could have been given to the poor? Or perhaps in particular, Judas – Sam appears to doubt God, perhaps to the point of turning his back. However, Sam seems to find redemption of sorts in the form of a boy he rescued from being a child soldier.

The film ends with a similar situation in which they lack the transport to rescue all the kids and he says they are staying until it comes. We are then told via on-screen texts about the reality of Joseph Koney and the Lord’s Resistance Army and that Sam and Lynn are still together. The credits rolls while documentary footage shows us the real Sam Childers, his family and the kids.

One thing of note is that the real Sam Childers is very much unlike the much more “action movie”- friendly Gerard Butler (who even then seems puppyish compared to, say, Jason Statham. His best role that I have seen him in was probably “300”). Perhaps a documentary on the real Childers would have been more interesting. The last word on the film goes to the real Sam who, defending his use of a gun, asks if your child was kidnapped and help was sent, did it matter HOW they were brought back? And there lies my problem.

It starts off with Childers wanting to help the kids but soon he takes up weaponry in order to do so. There is a scene in which a woman who appears to work in humanitarian aid is confronted by a road block and when offering her hands up, is struck down by the butt of a gun. Promptly Gerard Butler appears with a rocket launcher and gets rid of the bad guys. It is also not entirely clear where Childers stands in his faith by the end. Earlier, during what could be his downward spiral, we hear him preach that God wants wolves, not sheep. One question could be whether Childers’ use of violence is any different from fighting in World Wars, or the Israelites acting under orders from God.

The title “Machine Gun Preacher” suggests a silly religious-themed B-movie (it can be an amusing title, certainly) but with perhaps (from the trailer) what appear to be honourable intentions. Thought-provoking as it is, I am unsure whether I can like or approve of the path Childers takes.

And when the title is onscreen, great emphasis is played on the word “GUN”.