Machine Gun Preacher

(M) Roadshow DVD

It’s safe to say that if you have been moved by the Kony 2012 campaign that this is a film that you should probably see. It deals with Christianity (that mainstream hurdle) and is a film that deserves attention.

Directed by Marc Forster, this is the transformational true story of Sam Childers, a former criminal who undergoes an astonishing redemption (and literal baptism) and finds an unexpected calling to save hundreds of kidnapped and orphaned children.

Gerard Butler delivers one of his finest performances as Childers, who went on to become the founder of the charity Angels of East Africa.

When he makes the decision to act it is a life-changing one. Called to go toEast Africato help repair homes destroyed by civil war, he is outraged by the horrors the children face.

When he resolves to start to build an orphanage in one of the areas controlled by the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) infamous for forcing children to become soldiers, indoctrinating them to perform unspeakable acts, it is not enough for him to shelter these children. He decides to save them from brutality and leads armed missions to retrieve and save kidnapped children.

While it’s hard to condone the violence that Childers uses against the evil forces of the LRA, the fact that Childers has helped emancipate thousands of orphaned children from this unspeakable organisation that seeks to starve and enslave children it is also perhaps what needs to happen in order to stop this atrocity.

While I wasn’t necessarily a fan of the gung-ho histrionics of this film and the fact that Childers’ spirituality never seemed to get in the way of a good gun fight, there’s no denying this bloke is a real person who has saved many children and given them back their childhoods, for this reason the film is definitely worth a look.

To find out more about Childers go to his website at www.machinegunpreacher.org/

Adrian Drayton

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