Genre: Action
Director: Marc Forster
Stars: Gerard Butler, Michelle Monaghan
**
Machine Gun Preacher is, if nothing else, a cautionary tale for other filmmakers: Just because your source material is inherently captivating and thrilling doesn’t mean your movie will be by default.
The film takes the harrowing true story of Sam Childers and reduces it to a plodding, by-the-numbers biopic strangled by its own chronology.
And the source material is pretty impressive: Childers, an ex-con and recovering drug addict, finds Jesus and heads to Africa for some missionary work.
But when he’s confronted with the horrors of war-torn Sudan, he launches his own crusade to rescue orphaned children, becoming a folk hero and target for rebel forces.
