Action. R. 2 hours, 7 mintues. At the Mayan.
“Machine Gun Preacher” is about a character with a mean streak a yard long.
When we first meet Sam Childers (Gerard Butler), he is being released from prison. He strolls out in leather biker gear and gives his wife (Michelle Monaghan) a hard time because she has quit her job as a stripper.
When she tells him she’s become a Christian, he gets loud and threatening and tells her that she will always be a stripper and a junkie no matter what she says. He shoots heroin, robs people at gunpoint and stabs a guy about 10 times and throws him from a car.
So when Sam, too, finds religion, we never forget what is in this guy and what he’s capable of. Sam’s violence is directed and transmuted based on where he is and what he happens to believe.
And no matter what he is, something within him makes him want to stand alone in the middle of a road with a machine gun, blasting guys out of a truck.
The movie is based on a true story, and Butler plays Childers as complicated and courageous. As long as Butler is on screen — virtually every scene — there is something to look at and study.
A missionary to Africa engages his interest. And from that point on the, Sudan and Uganda, particularly orphans, become a focus and then an obsession.
Is he a hero or a lunatic? He’s possibly neither, or possibly a little of both, but this is the problem with making a movie about a real person.
Director Marc Forster (“Monster’s Ball”) gives the movie the grainy look of a mid-1980s grindhouse feature, which is interesting. But somewhere in the middle of this 127-minute film, the energy drops out, and Forster never quite gets it back.
