Machine Gun Preacher: Movie Review

Don't let the name fool you: although you might look down the nose at the title of this movie as unsophisticated, this film, part of the official selection of the 2011 Toronto Film Festival, is worth watching, and the title carries a meaning given by the movie's most important characters.  "Shotgunner" Sam Childers infests his body with drugs and alcohol, and fumigates a sailor's vitriol from his mouth.  Out of prison and discovering that his wife, Lynn, has abandoned her life as a stripper because she has "found Jesus," Childers' anger grows, as he throws himself headlong into a field of blood with his old biker friends and their ilk at a dingy bar.  After one particular night of violence, ending in what he thinks is murder, Sam pleads with Lynn for help.  Sam gets it, and then gives what he has to rescue orphaned children in war-torn Sudan,b making it his life's calling. 

Machine Gun Preacher  stars Gerard Butler as Childers, Michelle Monaghan as his wife Lynn, and Michael Shannon as Donnie, Childers' forlorn partner in drugs, crime and the dysentery of the seedy life. Scenes open in a small, rusty Pennsylvania town, dunking the viewer into the muck and mire of life in a dirty trailer and all the disposed items a life like Childers' brings.  There are numerous beer bottles scattered throughout his rectangular, tin box of a home, and although Lynn is doing her best to live clean and responsible, Childers demands the life of a lamprey.  His prized possession is his Harley Davidson motorcycle, and second to that is his shotgun, which he uses to continue in his life of drug addiction and violent crime.

This movie is based upon the true story of Sam Childers, whose repentance from a life of anger and poison of all kinds, whether in terms of substance, language, or relationships, leads him to church where he is baptized as a follower of Jesus.  What precipitated this repentance is an intense scene of Childers washing blood off his hands and clothes after murdering (so he thinks) a would-be attacker and vagrant.  Now in church and living a clean, hard-working life in construction, Childers hears a sermon that changes his life. An American missionary to Uganda, tells of the great needs in Africa, and how all people are interconnected as God's children, no matter where they live.  Childers, whose new life has given him much success in building his own construction company, desires to travel to Uganda to help in the one good thing he knows how to do: build things.

While Childers knows hammers and nails, he also knows guns--and he'll use them, soon enough.  In Uganda, he travels to the Sudan with a freedom fighter where he witnesses the atrocities of warlord Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), known for its mutilation, rape and torture of women and children, sex-trafficking, and "child killers," where Kony and his henchmen demand of children that they kill their parents, or be killed themselves.  One night, in Sudan, Childers takes in dozens upon dozens of fleeing children into the hostel where he is sleeping.  They flee because the LRA attacks their villages in the night, burning, raping, murdering, kidnapping, and creating tiny monsters of the innocent.

Childers will have none of it.  Machine Gun Preacher tests the ethical mores of the viewer, as we see him engage in warfare against the LRA while trying to build and orphanage in a war zone--and that against the wishes of his Sudanese and Ugandan friends.  The title of the movie comes from the nickname he earns among the children of Sudan, for Childers continues to fight a very real war against Kony and his LRA.

However, after coming home to America, the culture shock of abundance, prosperity, and apathy toward those who suffer beyond one's ability to comprehend, only fuels his anger and hatred all the more.  One example is when Childers asks for $5,000 from a well-to-do-friend who owns a car dealership.  He hopes to build improvements at the orphanage (such as a playground).  Then, he is invited to his friend's house--a mansion of sorts--where at a party, opulence sets the table among fresh smiles and happy nods of "Oh isn't that nice, that you care for those poor, poor, children."  He receives a meager check for $150, leaving the party in disgust as he walks past brand new sports cars painted cherry red.

The filmaking and writing in Machine Gun Preacher aid the contrast of peaceful life in America and the war zone of the Sudan, and what it's like to be a man caught in the middle.  Butler portrays Childers as a man who goes from anger to anger: in the first case, he's just "angry."  In the second, he's angry at something: evil.  He's not a monolith, however, as the breakthrough scene and catalyst of the film shows Childers holding a dead child in his arms after the child had stepped on a land mine.  Shaking with tears, we can see the determination to fight for something (justice) and against something (evil) sprout to life.

The writing and filmaking do well by the viewer in terms of the seedy, biker bars, where life is shown for its dingy malaise and background music like cheesy 80's hair bands (Y&T's "Dirty Girl"--funny--I had just checked out Y&T on Youtube the night before.  I have no idea why), traditional good ol' boy southern rock (Lynard Skynard's "Saturday Night Special").  One thing that remains static in the character of Childers in this film is his anger, which almost destroys his family and his church.  He's now bankrupt, and sells his business and gives up his home, suffering alienation from his wife and daughter.  All for the orphans.  Does he love the orphans more than his family?  And what of the hatred inside of him?  How can he serve and save the Sudanese children with so much hate fueling his every decision in life? 

This movie is real and raw.  Although there is Christian preaching in the film, one doesn't get the feeling of being "preached to."  Instead, the viewer is an observer, and this is the way it should be.  The movie doesn't come across like a tract in the church scene where Childers repents of his life of crime and drugs.  The ethics of the films also cause one to ponder: is violence ever allowed in order to stop evil?  Yes, say "just war" theorists.  But what about vigilante justice as in Childers' case, if indeed that is what it is?  Donnie, who has relapsed into drug use and is about to die asks, "Sam...can God forgive us for what we've done?"  Sam knows he has blood on his hands.  Again, the writing is good here.  No "apologetic" is given on the part of Sam--only silence.  Another example of excellent contrast is showing the vast Sudanese landscape, so dry and barren, with Lynn, as she speaks with Sam in the supermarket.  In this scene, the grocery aisle is pristine, and empty of people, but full of boxes, food, juice, milk and eggs--enough to feed an entire orphanage.  In the same way, the Sudanese countryside is full of people, not food, violence, not cleanliness, scarcity, not plenty, nor abundance. 

Then there is comparison and contrast between the Machine Gun Preacher and Kony, the warlord.  (We are kept in waiting to see if he'll get caught or killed).  A red-hedded UN Aid Worker warns Childers against using violence to establish peace, "For," she says, "this is how Kony started out."  But Childers' working class "get it done by doing it" attitude is not shaken: he must continue to fight for these children.  At the end of the film, in which Chris Cornell's (Audio Slave, Soundgarden) song "The Keeper" plays, the real Sam Childers asks the viewer this question: "If your child was abducted, and you know I could get him or her back to you, would you care how I did it?" 

Every Christian should watch this film, especially evangelicals who think life is about "enjoying the American Dream."  A note to parents, that the movie has one heck of a sex scene in a car (no nudity, however), a lot of F-bombs, and disturbing images of violence.  Still, the film is suitable for adults, and doesn't glory in those things, but they add the right intensity to show what life is really like in rural PA biker life, in Sudan, and in the heart of every man who struggles to keep his honor while sacrificing his soul.  This is an intense film, and is sure to change the life of the viewer, hopefully with a view to helping the poorest of the poor, the outcast, the widow and the orphan.

If you  have ever been to a third world country and seen the slums, the poverty and the violence against women and children done by evil men, you too know the anger that easily wells up inside of you when your own children ask for petty American trifles like toys, limousines for formal dances, and the like.  Childers struggles against his wife's call to love his family as much as he loves the orphans in the Sudan, and movie viewers want the story to end.  This will only happen when Kony is caught.  

Movie Review: Facing the Giants

Most dudes love a football movie. That is, most dudes who like a steak, a cold beer, and a burger for dessert. "Facing the Giants" is a football movie, but it purports to be much more. Most dudes who love steak, a cold one and a juicy burger with which to wash it down and satiate by the telly, will be impressed by this film's bold declarations concerning American evangelical notions of Christianity. Impression, of course, goes two ways: one might notice say, about eleven dead dear along State Highway 31 while traversing the Little Kanawha River in West Va., in the span of only a few miles. That's impressive. But only because of the mass quantity of rotting venison waiting for the county men to receive funds from the State and clean up the carcasses lying on the side of such an alarmingly short spit of road. The other aspect of impression is the normal kind you're thinking of: you like it for this and that reason. This movie, while having many positive things to say about father-son reconciliation, confidence, perseverance, faith and honor, has the very real feel of a Bible tract set to motion over the course of a football season. The Bible tract part contains the classic evangelicalism of "Christian films" of years gone by. Namely, these include conversion, crises of faith solved through prayer and miracle, early disintegration of antagonistic characters, and a happy ending.

"Facing the Giants" is about a losing football coach in the South, in Georgia. Now, no one likes a losing football team anywhere, but in the South it is apparently as deplorable as telling Grandma that she must indeed go to the nursing home, cuz we're tired and can't help you anymore.

Coach Grant Taylor not only hasn't had a winning season for his Shiloh Christian Academy Eagles, but his house has a strange odor, his wife can't get pregnant, and his car is a Chevy Celebrity, probably made by a drunken, hungover, Marlboro packin' assembly crew from Detroit put together when Bush Sr. was in office. He makes $24,000 a year. Even the players are the abject picture of teen apathy: they lose to a neighboring school that is waaaaay worse than they are. After three losses, the Dads want Coach Grant out. And the sprinkling on top of the bunk cake? Grant, not his wife, is the lame duck: he is sterile.

Now, with the prospect of total and utter failure as a husband and coach, Grant wanders into a field with open Bible at the Psalms, and prays for strength. His wife sees him reading his Bible at 3am, and decides to pray herself. This is good. God's people should pray. Times of suffering especially compel us to pray. Still, the feel is "tracty." Music plays in the background, characters silently pray--alone. Individualism manifests itself in American religion.

But, a man shows up to Coach's office one day. With Bible in hand, and not saying a word of greeting, the man quotes from Revelation 3. First he says, "Revelation chapter 3." not "Good morning Coach. Hey listen, I know times are tough right now, but...". The passage read is, "'I have an open door which no one is able to shut, and which when I shut, no one will be able to open."

"Coach," the man says, "God has an open door for you in this school. He'll close it when he wants, but while it's open, he's got you hear for a reason. So you'd best do your best while you can." Or something to that effect. Individualism manifests itself in American religion.

The movie contains many platitudes like this, from dads pep-talking unconfident sons with God rhetoric that sounds cliche, to a spiritual renewal of confessed sin at the school to a conversion of an estranged son (again, from his father), to Coach Taylor motivating his players with a sermon on glorifying God in all they do, including football. Not all of this is bad. But not all of it is good, either. Case in point is the episode of the man quoting from Revelation 3. Taken in context, these words in Scripture have nothing to do with the ordinary vicissitudes of individual, human struggle in day to day life. Rather, the passage is about the church persevering in the midst of 1st century persecution and being rewarded by Jesus for not denying that he is the Messiah. The movie does many things like that. But, this is typical of evangelicalism: a highly subjective, individualistic notion of religion that has it crux and focal point on the "moment" of conversion.

Another classic example is when Coach Taylor is alone in the locker room just before the State Championship game. His Eagles are going to play the magnificent Giants, an 85 man roster of strength, power and speed. How to win this game? Well, Mark Richt, from the University of Georgia shows up to encourage Coach Taylor. This is indeed a fine gesture. Richt has noticed Taylor's success: he has motivated these young boys out of their apathy to live, not just for football, but for a heartfelt love for God and for each other. Playing football to the glory of God has proven timeless for these boys to turn them into winners. But here is where again, the film strays from good solid principle, to plain cheesiness. Richt tells Taylor that he has indeed won the "Big Dance."

"But how?" Taylor asks. "The game hasn't even begun yet."

"You won the big dance when you accepted Christ as Savior, Coach." The phrase "accept Christ as Savior" is not found in the Bible, but is typical pontification of salvific platitudes found especially within evangelicalism. Taken this way, life is reduced to a one-time decision, while the "big dance" is whether or not you are going to hell, or whether or not you will have true meaning or happiness in life. The problem here is not that hell shouldn't be taken as a reality or that Jesus isn't the only source for meaning, but rather that the focus is on the one-time event, rather than upon the art of serving one's fellow man, which Christians are exhorted to do over and over, in order to glorify God and extend his kingdom: Paul writes, "Whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men, (Romans 14:18). We don't accept Christ; he accepts us. We know he has accepted us if we serve him.

The worst part of the movie is when the Eagles need a 51 yard field goal to win the game with only 2 seconds on the clock. The aforementioned son of unconfidence is convinced as the team's kicker that he can only kick the ball 35 yards. Coach Taylor asks the boy, screaming over the anticipating, noisy crowd, "Do you believe God can help you kick that ball?!"

What? Do you say, "No,"? Enter the fallacy of the complex question--answer yes, and kick a 51-yarder (if you don't make it, then you didn't have enough faith), answer no, and you don't have any faith. "Yes," the boy says. Now go, kick it and win. Just then, the wind changes direction....

Hmmm.... Wasn't the American flag just pointing in the direction opposite the kicker? Now it's going with him!

The ball is....

Good!

Congratulations, Coach! You have just defeated the "Giants." (The kicker's name is David, as in David and Goliath).

Finally, the movie ends on an even higher note. Coach Taylor's wife is pregnant with their firstborn. Sigh.