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Machine Gun Preacher (15)

Action, Crime

The story of Sam Childers, a former drug-dealing biker tough guy who found God and became a crusader for hundreds of Sudanese children who've been forced to become soldiers.

More information on this production is available at www.machinegunpreacher.co.uk.

The critical consensus

It’s gratifying to see Butler giving a proper acting role the old college try. Despite his best efforts, Forster’s film, while pulling no punches, still somehow manages to miss the mark.

***(*)(*)David Hughes, Empire Online, 31/10/2011

Material that might have made a terrific documentary instead becomes a worthy drama. Well-meant and well-made, it’s full of fire and brimstone but short on revelation.

***(*)(*)Andrew Lowry, Total Film, 31/10/2011

Overly preachy and overly long. A missed opportunity.

**(*)(*)(*)Josh Winning, Little White Lies, 02/11/2011

Forster clearly wants us to look on this man as a complex, driven individual and debate whether he is saint, sinner, or a mixture of both, but there are too many mood changes, too abruptly handled, to even begin to work him out. When a resolution of sorts arrives, it is horribly pat given all that has gone before.

**(*)(*)(*)Alison Rowat, The Herald, 03/11/2011

Butler can do the standard machismo, but hasn't the chops to suggest the personal complexity that lay behind Childers's volte-face.

*(*)(*)(*)(*)Anthony Quinn, The Independent, 03/11/2011

The harrowing subject matter...deserved and demanded more sophisticated treatment than it gets in this simplistic picture.

**(*)(*)(*)Henry Fitzherbert, Daily Express, 03/11/2011

While the film might be biographically accurate, it isn’t artistically satisfying: real people are inexplicable in a way that characters in films shouldn’t be, and consequently, he feels half-finished.

Tim Robey, The Telegraph, 03/11/2011

An exploration of the character and his questionable sanity would have been fascinating enough.

***(*)(*)Alistair Harkness, The Scotsman, 04/11/2011

Plot holes hobble the gloss; at least two gun battles abruptly end at what looked like a critical moment. At other times, you're wrong-footed more pleasantly: an encounter with a fragrant doctor doesn't resolve into cliche, and the ending is mature.

***(*)(*)Catherine Shoard, The Guardian, 03/11/2011

Try harder, or don't try at all.

**(*)(*)(*)Daily Record, 04/11/2011

A documentary would have been the appropriate genre.

Philip French, The Observer, 06/11/2011

Machine Gun Preacher (15)

Where and when?

General release. Check local listings for show times.

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