Movie Review: Machine Gun Preacher

In case some of you are wondering, I am not a Christian, so no, this is not why I wrote a review on this movie.

My boyfriend and I recently went on a day trip to Desaru - one of those online deals I found on Bigplusdeal.com. Anyway putting the trip aside (which was GREAT!), he bought some DVDs when we were dropped off at a local mall (where we were stared at by the locals like some rare species which just surfaced upon Earth), and one of them was The Machine Gun Preacher.



Honestly, the DVD cover and the idea of 'Machine Gun' and 'Preacher' did not sound attractive to me but there we were, at home on a Sunday night trying to decide on the movie to watch and he just randomly placed it into the DVD player.

'Oh well, at least it's the sexy Gerald Butler!' I thought.

The next 129 minutes was unexpectingly captivating, not because of the cinematography, the firearms or Gerald (though it should be :P ). The film, based on a true story, was simply mind-blowing due to the harsh reality of the world and how one man stands against it.

It tells of the story of Sam Childers who found God and changed his life from being a hopeless drug-dealing biker to joining the Sudanese Freedom Fighters and becoming a crusader for hundreds of Sudanese children who were abducted, abused, orphaned or forced by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) to embrace LRA's brutality as young soliders or become additions to their enslavement/sex rings.

Sam Childers

He went to Sudan on a Christian mission once and never stopped fighting for the children after witnessing the atrocity of the LRA. Funding almost everything by himself, he and his wife Lynn founded and operate Angels of East Africa in the war zone vicinity of Sudan, housing more than 300 children in their care.

Boring as it may sound, I am not exaggerating when I say that any humane person would find this movie an eye-opener - the misfortune and sufferings existing at the other side of the globe and the cruelty and atrocity of war. The war scenes are not exaggerated, the killing scene not too gore and most importantly, no matrix-like bullets dodging miracles - making this film a real experience.

I would give this film two thumbs up, and a big salute to Sam Childers who is still in Sudan today fighting for the children.

For a trailer of this film, please visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eddnloOFjwY and to hear the true story from the horse's mouth, please go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm_nTiJk3nQ