Machine Gun Preacher

Directors: Marc Forster
Starring: Gerard Butler, Michelle Monaghan, Michael Shannon
Time Out rating:

No, it’s not the latest attempt at kick-starting a comic-book superhero franchise; rather, the holy man in question is Sam Childers, a former Harley-ridin’, heroin-shootin’, gun-lovin’ badass from Pennsylvania. As played by 300’s Gerard Butler, this real-life ex-con radiates masculine menace from minute one, even after he gives up his evil ways and finds God. A visit from a missionary prompts Childers to travel to Sudan, where he’s soon building an orphanage and fighting firearms with firearms, thus earning the titular nickname. (Given his penchant for popping out of the bushes with guns blazing, one character’s assessment that Childers is the ‘African Rambo or something’ feels way more accurate.) This Good Samaritan won’t let his family back home, his lack of funds or a civil war stop him from single-handedly protecting his underage wards. Wait, did we say this wasn’t a superhero movie?

Childers’s varied, charitable life story warrants a movie, but whether that means it’s okay to simply mash up sappy Christian piety and action-movie chaos is highly debatable. Marc Forster’s résumé is one mixed bag – a JM Barrie biopic, a Bond movie, Monster’s Ball – yet if his Kite Runner adaptation and this PSA on steroids are any indication, overly earnest if violent exotica may be his default métier. A true tale of a born-again brute with a heart of gold and a full clip can, surprisingly, let someone indulge those tendencies; it won’t, however, do justice to either a religious rebel or his righteous cause.

Machine Gun Preacher opens at Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho and Human Trust Cinema Shibuya on February 4