Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		2.5

Machine Gun Preacher Blu-ray Movie Review

There's power in the gun, power in the gun.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater June 8, 2012

Perhaps you remember the KONY 2012 campaign that blew up our collective Facebook news feeds back in March, attempting to raise awareness of Joseph Kony, the brutal cult-of-personality leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, a warped psuedo-Christian militia which regularly conscripts African children into service as soldiers and sex slaves. The response to the campaign's video was decidedly mixed; on one hand, it's certainly good that more people are becoming aware enough of Kony to be properly outraged, but on the other, that outrage has generally took the form of what's now been called slacktivism—sharing and re-tweeting and blogging with smug self-satisfaction, but not taking any real, concrete measures.

Outlaw biker-gone-good Sam Childers has been taking direct action against Kony and his thugs long before Facebook was even a thing. Armed action. The "Machine Gun Preacher," as he's known, was a violent junkie who found Jesus and had a vision to go to Sudan and build an orphanage smack dab in the middle of LRA territory. As his sobriquet implies, Childers isn't afraid to fight back against Kony's guerrilla troops, and his Rambo-like vigilantism has been alternately embraced and denounced by various Christian groups and NGOs. Do the ends justify the means? Is Childers needlessly reckless? Does he have his own cult of personality? Does no one see the irony that he kills in the name of Christ those who also claim to be killing in the name of Christ? Unfortunately, the biopic about his "work" in Sudan skirts too carefully around the really tough questions and overlooks less- positive details, like the fact that the real Childers is a weapons stockpiler and small-time arms dealer who sells guns to the Sudan People's Liberation Army, has his own militia, and believes God has called him personally to kill Joseph Kony.

In the film, directed by Quantum of Solace's Marc Forster and based on the Machine Gun Preacher's own memoir, Childers is played by 300 star Gerard Butler with a perpetual grimace and a less-than-convincing Pennsylvania accent. When we first meet him, Childers is a hellion straight out of prison who goes immediately back to his heroin-injecting, drug-stealing ways, raising Cain with his bad influence of an old pal, Donnie (Michael Shannon). Childers doesn't take it well when he finds out that his wife Lynn (Michelle Monaghan) has given up stripping because "it ain't right in the eyes of God," but after a delirious bender where he nearly kills a hitchhiker, Childers realizes he's on the highway to hell, goes to church, and gets baptized, vowing to turn his life around. Soon enough—a few years compressed to a few minutes of movie time—he has his own contracting company, a new house, a happy family. But he's still in search of a calling.

Inspired by a missionary's sermon, Childers goes to Uganda on a humanitarian trip and convinces an SPLA soldier named Deng (Souléymane Sy Savané) to give him a tour of civil war-torn southern Sudan, where he witnesses a child die from stepping on a land mine. Understandably, it's a life- altering event. Later, he hears God tell him to 1.) start a come-as-you-are biker church outside Pittsburgh for misfits and sinners, and 2.) return to Africa to build an orphanage.

The film flits episodically between these two locales, and even when Childers is back in the States, it's clear his heart is in Sudan. He pours all his family's resources into the orphanage, hits up sleazy used car salesmen for donations, and pleads with his bank to extend his tapped-out credit. He's mostly powerless and purposeless at home, so you can see why he gets such a high from being in Africa, where legends quickly spread about the AK- toting white preacher who can't be hit by bullets. Defending his "kids" against the LRA becomes an all-consuming passion—to the extent that he starts neglecting his own wife and daughter—and we get the sense that Childers has simply traded one kind of violent addiction for another.

But this is as complex as the film's parsing of his character gets. Childers' struggles with doubt, his righteous anger, his quick-to-the-draw unwillingness to turn the other cheek—all are simplistically dealt with in Jason Keller's script, which is about as subtle as the KONY 2012 campaign. (That is, not very.) With a single exception—an aid worker less than impressed with Childers' methods—no one questions his motivations or tactics. The film wants us to draw our own conclusions about Childers, but in its wavering attempts to remain objective, it doesn't say much of substance about the man or his mission.

Despite being based on a true story, Machine Gun Preacher operates in tough-guy action movie cliches, so you can expect lots of firefights and battle-frenzied adrenaline rushes and agonizing defeats. Like in Blood Diamond and countless other films about the "dark continent," the chaos and poverty becomes merely the backdrop for a white man's heroism, a Hollywood trope that's meant to connect audiences with the unfamiliar but inadvertently devalues the initiative and bravery of actual Africans who are also trying to make a difference in their homeland. Note that Deng is given next to nothing to do in the film, despite becoming Childers' second-in-command. This is very much a one-man show.

That goes for the performances as well. The always-excellent Michael Shannon is restricted to a small part as the story's cautionary tale—rescued from drug abuse but subsequently abandoned and overshadowed—and Mission Impossible III's Michelle Monaghan is arguably miscast as the stay- at-home ex-stripper who frets about money but never expresses any concern for her husband's safety. Gerard Butler, though? He's in practically every scene and absolutely chews the gristle off this role, alternately erupting in rage, breaking down, and hulking out. He kind of makes you wish Machine Gun Preacher lived up to the grindhouse, b-movie exploitation quality of its title.

Machine Gun Preacher Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shot primarily on 16mm, with some 35mm footage mixed in, Machine Gun Preacher has a grainy, gritty visual quality that jives well with the film's themes and setting. (I was reminded of The Last King of Scotland, another African story shot on 16mm.) The movie's 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer looks naturally filmic—there's no noise reduction, grain erasing, or edge enhancement here—but the use of the 16mm inevitably leads to a softer image, with less fine detail compared to a 35mm film. Nevertheless, this is one of the better-looking 16mm films I've seen recently in high definition. Color is dense and vibrant, with a frequent warm cast to the highlights, and though black levels can be a bit oppressive during the darker nighttime scenes, contrast is generally excellent. As you'd expect for such a recent film, the print is in perfect condition, and I didn't notice any compression problems or encode hiccups whatsoever. An entirely faithful-to-intent transfer, from the looks of it.

Machine Gun Preacher Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Machine Gun Preacher gives itself over to action movie theatrics quite often, and the film's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track backs up the visuals with potent and immersive effects. Of course, machine guns get a ton of play, and during the firefights with LRA militiamen, you'll hear bullets zipping through the soundfield from every direction, splintering wood, punching through metal, and generally popping off in rat-a-tat- tat bursts. The clamor extends to shattering glass, big explosions, and screaming children during the skirmishes, but even quieter scenes tend to feature a decent amount of environmental ambience. Minneapolis-based music production company Asche & Spencer provide a thematically heavy score, and the various cues have a rich, space-filling presence, with great clarity and dynamics. Even in the crazier moments, dialogue is clean, balanced, and discernible. The disc includes optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles, which appear in easy-to-read white lettering.

Machine Gun Preacher Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Machine Gun Preacher - A Discussion with Marc Forster (1080p, 18:36): "The story was never, 'white man goes to save Africa' for me, but 'Africa saves him,'" says Forster, who goes on to talk about the casting, Joseph Kony, the violence in the story, and the real Sam Childers' reaction to the film.
• Making the Music for Machine Gun Preacher (1080p, 14:00): The film's composing team and editor Matt Chesse talk about the process of writing music, narrowing down the palette of instruments, and finding the right tone for each section of the story.
• "The Keeper" Music Video by Chris Cornell (1080p, 3:46)
• Theatrical Trailer (1080p, 2:28)
• Sneak Peeks (1080p, 9:19)

Machine Gun Preacher Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Sam Childers' story would probably be better served by a documentary, letting us get to know the actual man instead of some action-hero facsimile of him. (Surprise, surprise, there's supposedly a doc coming out any day now.) Machine Gun Preacher takes a complicated guy and a complicated situation, simplifies both to black and white with only a few muddled shades of gray in between, and leaves us unsure of what to think. And not in a good way. The best I can figure it, the real Sam Childers is a well-intentioned but egomaniacal do-gooder with a love of guns who's stuck in a feedback loop of his own self-importance. I can't say that I recommend this one, but if you're interested, the film does feature a decent Blu-ray presentation and a small but substantial collection of extras.