Thursday, September 29, 2011

Review - Machine Gun Preacher


Grade: C

Good: Brings much needed attention to a serious issue and offers heartwarming moments, in the most conventional of terms. Performance by Savane and Magale rise above the weaker efforts of more recognizable stars.

Bad: Another spin on the white-man-saves-the-savages narrative, that seems to willfully lack awareness of its inherent, potentially offensive redundancy. Butler fails to capture the fire behind the real-life Childers in favor of playing a super-cool tough guy who is in the wrong movie.

Ugly: The abject suffering the people of the Southern Sudan and Northern Uganda region face is deplorable.

One of dour comic Louis C.K.’s most popular bits is a rant on “white people problems”. White people problems, or first world problems as they are occasionally known, are those mundane problems that seems to cripple the well-fed, educated and housed people, generally Caucasian, of developed countries like the United States , the United Kingdom, and France. These problems can be anything from Starbucks running out of milk temporarily to upper middle class professionals being forced to devote a fraction of their $100,000 salary to pay for an electric bill that jumped from $150 to $250. All problems that cannot remotely compare to the suffering of people in developing countries like Uganda and Sudan, where children are routinely abducted while their families and villages are brutally destroyed by warlords and their subversive armies.

The majority of the population in developed countries knows little of the strife and suffering the people of these countries face on a daily basis. An even smaller number is aware and able to help, until they forget. Reformed biker and preacher Sam Childers has never forgotten the people, particularly the children, of Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan, and has devoted his life to defending their right to live in freedom and safety.

Marc Forster and screenwriter Jason Keller’s Machine Gun Preacher is solemn, if occasionally disconnected, testament to a man who will not quit and the seemingly-impossible mission has saved his life as much as it has threatened to destroy it. Gerard Butler stars as Sam Childers, founder of Angels of East Africa, a former biker, junkie, small-time hood who lived life beyond the wild side until a violent encounter with a hitchhiker forces him to rethink his way of life. Baptized and committed to Christ, Childers opens a construction company and begins to make a better life for his wife Lynn (Michelle Monaghan) and his daughter, Paige (Madeline Carroll). During a routine trip to Sunday service, Childers is moved by a missionary who spent many years working with the people, particularly the children, of war-ravaged the Southern Sudan-Northern Uganda region. Not long after, Childers visits the region as part of a Habitat-for-Humanity-style program and witnesses the shamefully high amount of suffering. Childers, inspired by a higher power, returns to build a church/orphanage in the region. When his church project is decimated by warlords, Childers takes a radical approach to saving the people on the border of the Sudan and Uganda, one that involves a many guns as it does gauze and one that may push Childers further from the family that saved him.

Gerard Butler does admirable work as Childers. Of course, the former-Leonidas excels when he’s called to be an action hero with a cause. A Rambo of Northern Africa, if you will. But, when forced to delve into the emotion and fire that lives within Childers, he’s a bit muted. Sure, the quiet, reflective man of action archetype fits well within this type narrative, but there seems to be a spark missing from Butler’s performance that would have made Butler’s interpretation of Childers as memorable as his mission. I know there’s a spark missing from Butler’s performance because Childers was present at the screening and to see the literal fire that emanates from this man is to see why Butler’s performance skews wide left of perfect. Childers is ferocious in his passion for his cause—this is a man who, in personal footage shown during the credits, is cocking a shotgun one-handed and firing in a smooth succession(top that, Ms. Connor)—and it bleeds through him. Butler, on the other hand, gives his interpretation of Childers as cool countenance that belies this intensity and his performance suffers for it. Despite the incongruity between real and movie Childers, Butler still owns the movie above and beyond all the supporting cast. Michelle Monaghan is adequate as Childers long-suffering wife, who deals patiently with her husband’s issues no matter what side of the law he’s on. Michael Shannon is sadly underutilized as Childer’s best friend, a recovering junkie who goes through the typical recovery arc, which gives less screen time to deliver the unsettling quality that Shannon typically brings to the big and small screen. Souleymane Sy Savane fares a little better than the rest of the supporting cast bringing a quiet dignity to his role as Childers right-hand man in Africa—jeez, that sounds bad—Deng. Young Junior Magale also deserves praise for his role as pre-teen who has lost all of his family and is desperately trying to find his lost brother, a plotline which probably would have made for a far more compelling narrative.

Forster does an able job of interpreting a script by impassioned screenwriter Jason Keller, who was also present at the screening—an oddity considering how quickly screenwriters are excused from the creative process. Unfortunately, Forster’s vision is serviceable and workmanlike rather than revelatory. Preacher is visually no different or unique than any meditative action film that Clint Eastwood may have made. There’s no visual signature or particular insight that elevates this above the material. Even worse, Forster, who doesn’t shy away from showing the horrors of the war in the region and its devastating impact on non-combatants, fails to present the region as something other than a catalyst for Childer’s redemption, and that’s the inherent problem with this story. No matter how you spin it, this is another “white man-saves-the-savages” narrative. Despite the honesty that I’m sure Keller and Forster infused Preacher with, it’s very hard to conquer that mental hurdle of “here we go again.” I wish Forster and Keller would have been able to introduce some awareness to film, considering that most cultures are cognizant if through visual or written literature that this is a common trope. That effort would have at least proven that the good people of the Sudan-Uganda region weren’t completely hopeless without a man like Childers. And, truthfully, at the rate Childers loses as many lives as he saves, one has to wonder how much good he is actually doing.

As it is, Preacher is an admirable effort, but it could have been so much more. From performances to direction, it seems like it’s going through the motions and hitting the exact same notes as similar stories have in years past. Preacher is a film that will surely make some members audience cringe, albeit for many different reasons, but it does make an effort, if not a particularly effective one, to bring attention to a cause that may go ignored in light of more popular issues. As Keller said during the Q&A that followed the film, this movie isn’t for those who know about the suffering in the Sudan and Uganda; it’s for those who don’t. While this may not be the optimal vehicle to enlighten those masses, you can’t fault Forster and co. for trying.

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