Midweek Mention... Machine Gun Preacher

Machine Gun Preacher

Sidey: this is another sort of, actually it was a crisp recommendation, but also breach. He had put forward a plea, just a general plea for some Jerry Butler content. Yeah.

Cris: Well, to be

Pete: fair, that's why

Cris: I, I had the

Pete: gosling

Cris: that we did previously that God forgives. And I thought, well, it's either that or, because I had that one already. And then I thought, well, if it's the Jerry Butler

Pete: and I didn't want to put something that's a, like a

Cris: Kandahar or something that's more recent, I thought well can go a little bit back in time Maybe something a bit more out there

Reegs: and what great title it's got as well. Machine Gun Preacher.

Cris: brilliant. The title is

Pete: Brilliant fucking

Reegs: hell. That's a great title.

What's

Sidey: What's the rook? How one The Hobo Hobo with the Shot. Yeah. It's that sort of vibe to me. Yeah. But, but I don't think the film is necessarily like that.

Reegs: no, because this is a kind of bi biographical, you know, action movie. It is. That's what Wikipedia describes it as. And that's true. And it's about a sort of a true story about a real person, Sam Child as,

Sidey: [00:01:00] Yeah.

Reegs: And it's got Gerard Butler, it's got Michelle Moynihan and Michael Shannon as well.

Sidey: Okay. Zod. So,

Reegs: yeah. And directed by Mark Foster, who did

Sidey: he's a swimmer, isn't

he

Reegs: think as well. And he was a swimmer.

Sidey: Yeah. Michelle Mohan Kikis Bang Bang. Was that her?

Yeah, that's what I thought. I recognized the name.

Cris: she's, she's good

Pete: in this one.

Reegs: is thought

Yeah.

Pete: we'll get into it,

Cris: but yeah, it is based on a real person.

Reegs: Sam Childers is the guy's name.

We're not introduced to him straight away because we start off in South Sudan in 2003, in a kind of middle of the action. The Lord's Resistance Army, the LRA Christian sort of extremist organization. They're attacking a village in South Sudan. And there's kind of shouting and gunfire and frightened villages and fathers being shot in front of families and huts being torched, and women being taken away for God knows what, and people pleading and like real happy stuff.

A child is cut on the cheek by one of the [00:02:00] operators and then lifts up a club and is forced to beat his mother to death. She has tears in her eyes and nods at him. It's okay to do

Cris: don't

Pete: show. They

Reegs: they don't show it. He's, he swings the club and it, it

Pete: Does it,

Cris: did I imagine this or is this a little bit of a text at the beginning to say that? Children are getting abducted

Pete: to be turned into There's certainly some at the end about No, I know, but

Reegs: Well, maybe there was some at the beginning. Yeah.

Cris: I can't, I'm pretty sure that, because either I read something about that before I watched the movie or

Reegs: right there

Cris: in, in the, yeah. It was

Reegs: child soldiers in,

Cris: Yeah. I, I can't really

Pete: really remember,

Cris: but yeah, that's kind of what's what we are opening Yeah.

Reegs: So we get that little bit of thing of that horrible violence. And then it says a few years earlier and we cut to Pennsylvania. At prison, we've got kind of moody, melancholic western type music. It's the release day of Sam Gerard Butler. He's an alcoholic drug using

Biker. [00:03:00] Biker. He meets his wife Lynn, and they barely even get down the road before they've pulled over for a fuck.

Yeah. all

Cris: him the side of the road and he's like, do you have any sies? Yeah.

Pete: away

Reegs: they, they're just shagging in the car. Probably even the, the fucking jails like behind them pretty much. And then they go back to the trailer park where he lives with his mother-in-law, I think. And his kid,

Cris: I think

Pete: it's his actual mom.

Reegs: Is it, is his mom?

Pete: Yeah. I think that's his

Cris: mom. Yeah. And, and they're him,

Reegs: So his wife Lynn, Michelle Mohan. She's given up her job as a stripper to work at a grocery

Sidey: store. Oh yeah.

Reegs: Yeah. And Sam is pissed off about that.

Cris: Yeah, he's really upset.

Yeah. It's like Friday night and you're not working. Oh no, I'm not stripping anymore. I'm doing

Reegs: Well, she's converted. She, she's working at a grocery store because she's converted. She tells him I've converted to Christianity while you've been in the joint, basically. And he says to her, you're still a fucking junkie, stripper. And you know it, so he, he's like a

Sidey: Wow. It's nice guy.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah.

Reegs: So he goes off to go and get drunk and do some with Michael Michael Shannon [00:04:00] l what's his name? Louie. Is it? No Donnie.

Cris: Donny.

Yeah, Donny.

Pete: Donny.

go on a big, like

Cris: yeah,

Pete: go to the bar,

Cris: biker's bar. There's a woman there.

Give him

Pete: smack.

Reegs: Mm-hmm.

Cris: And yeah, yeah,

Reegs: yeah, it's all seems of him getting high and then vomiting the next morning after it's really bad.

Actually, his kid's on the couch

Cris: She's playing and he's there just,

Reegs: because

he's just so fucking drunk. And that's like intercut with images of his wife

at

Pete: church.

So.

Reegs: The movie kind of picks up a bit of pace. When Donny and Sam raid a crack house they go and get some drugs and money, and afterwards they're like really pleased with themselves. They're driving off. They they're getting high in the car.

Pete: Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah. Sam, like, Gerald Butler injects

Cris: yeah. He's like, oh, oh, you hold the wheel and you Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah. Fills him up with Scag as they're going along. And then they pick up a drifter at the side of the road, which turns out to be a terrible idea

Pete: because this guy

Reegs: almost instantly pulls a knife

Cris: I want to go to

Pete: there,

Cris: Take me there now. [00:05:00] And you can see,

Pete: you can see in

Cris: front seat.

J Butler's like Sam just gets so

Reegs: His rage is building and we've seen him be a violent man already, and then he does be leap into the back and like, wrestle with the guy and then

Cris: stabs him. so many

Reegs: times I thought the guy was dead,

just

Cris: like

Fucking going for it and then dumps him on the side of the road and like, just drive.

What happened? Just drive.

Reegs: Yeah.

Cris: And then the

Reegs: he gets home and he cleans himself up frantically. There's obviously blood

Pete: everywhere

Cris: with the help of

Reegs: wife. Yeah. And he just asks her, he is like, he says, I need help. And,

uh,

Sidey: hit right bottom

Reegs: where help comes in the form of the

Sidey: Yeah.

Cris: And you, we can, you can see him when you see when he puts the shirt on or when

Pete: he just goes to the church.

Yeah. And

Cris: he, she's like,

Pete: there's

Cris: the, the wife and the daughter in the car. And the daughter's like rolling her eyes is, is he coming?

Reegs: Mm.

Cris: like, oh, you know, the wife's like, oh, let me go check. And he's like, can you, I don't think I can do this.

She's like, don't worry, it'll be okay. And then you see them in the [00:06:00] church, like proper hallelujah and all that. And he's just, there just, you can see how uncomfortable

Sidey: he's Yeah. Yeah. Wearing

Cris: a shirt,

Sidey: right?

Cris: Just just by wearing a

Reegs: and what he's going through as well, because he feels like a fraud when he gets to the church, even though they're offering salvation and redemption, which is exactly what he's looking for. And they're offering it via

baptism.

Yes. Which he eventually takes up.

And oh God. And I put here in my notes, a child sings one of the most awful wobbling renditions of amazing grace

Pete: Yeah.

Cris: The one with the no teeth. The, the kid with a missing teeth in the front.

Reegs: Yeah, it's terrible. Yeah. So anyway, born again. Sam becomes like a successful construction worker, first working for other people and kind of building up a name for himself.

He goes for like a really uncomfortable meeting with Donnie later where he is given up drinking and that sort of stuff. And the movie is constantly floating, like asking the questions or will he get back into it or,

Cris: When he sells the bike, that's when he, when he, he is like, oh, I didn't hear you pulling in.

And he is like, oh no, I sold the bike. And the guy is like, Michael Shannon's character's like, what?

No man.

[00:07:00] And then he goes, do you wanna

Pete: hit? Yeah. Just

Cris: As in like, oh, I'm your mate, but do, and he is like, they don't actually show it, they just show him coming Yeah.

Reegs: And then he's got like a mark on his arm and his wife spots it and he's like, oh, I gave blood today.

So it's like the movie fakes you out

Sidey: Oh,

Cris: he brings

Reegs: and he brings $20. and he puts $20.

down and it is the truth, but it's constantly faking you

Sidey: out and asking

Reegs: you questions like that sort of stuff. Anyway, a tornado. Hits Pennsylvania. It like devastates the place. And in the aftermath he and a bunch of buddies like decide to kind of rebuild the area and it's like a massive economic boom for them.

And he earns loads of money and they move to like a really nice new house in the

Sidey: in the burbs,

Reegs: the woods, but

Cris: in the woods. Yeah.

Pete: But again, like in the woods? Yeah. Like nice.

Sidey: the woods. Yeah. Okay.

Reegs: Then a Ugandan priest, this white guy visits his local church that he's got into and talks about the construction work that's being carried out there, and Sam kind of decides to volunteer and go out there and help with the construction

Cris: Yeah, he and I thought that was actually quite nicely made in the [00:08:00] movie where I've seen movies before where, oh, the idea is kind of like just a seed planted, but he's like,

Pete: the next morning

Cris: wakes up, it's, I know what I'm gonna do. The guy speaks and then he can see him kind of just sat there at the breakfast and he is like. We're doing pretty well. Construction's doing well. I could, I'm gonna be gone for a couple of weeks. I think I can help these people.

Reegs: Mm-hmm.

Cris: I, I thought it was quite a nice way

Pete: of it, rather than, Ooh,

Cris: dreamt it last night. Then

Pete: I had the

revelation. Yeah. Well, because it is supposed to be a small act in a way, although it is a big thing to go over there, it's, he's only gonna be there for a few weeks.

Reegs: It's using skills that he's picked up and all that sort of stuff. So, next we are in Northern Uganda and he's building on a construction site. Whilst that's being overwatched by a couple of soldiers, one of whom is Dang. Yeah. There from the. SPLA, the Sudan, people's Liberation Army. There are a bunch of freedom fighters, I operating in the area.

And he asks, Sam asks D, when all the others are going off, he's like, well, will you take me up north to Sudan from

Pete: [00:09:00] Uganda. Yeah.

Cris: Because the other ones are going for a kind of like, oh, let's go and have a few drinks. Yeah. Down south. And he's like, no, I want to go and see.

Pete: Yeah.

Reegs: he wants to see the war zone basically. So, and they're reluctant to take him, but he insists so they go.

And on their way up there, I think D explains that his family was killed by the LRA. Yeah.

Cris: Yeah.

Reegs: And that the north is controlled by Muslims who've been systematically slaughtered by the Christian South for the last 30 Oh man, there's a really brutal scene when he gets down there. He arrives and there's a medical tent and straight away a woman, the nurse there,

Cris: which

I think he's a doctor or something. The, the British sounding woman.

No. Yeah.

Reegs: I think she's there with like medicine, some frontier or something. And,

Cris: she's like, oh, hold his leg or Help me

Pete: move. No, move him from the

Cris: stretcher to the bed.

Reegs: a woman who's been brought in and she's

Cris: No

Pete: no lips.

Reegs: lips cut off. Yeah. And it looks grotesque. You, like you can see to the skeleton and,

Cris: and just the teeth. Yeah. And he's like, what happened to her? What happened to her? She was arguing with the rebels.

She, she [00:10:00] kept arguing and they cut her lips off. Yeah. And you're

Reegs: At night, he sleeps in this like really modest ho like room. And then there's like scores of like displaced children come out at night

hundreds

of them to sleep.

They're sort of, it's two, they can't sleep in their village because the LRA are kind of raiding it. So these children have all come out and sleep on the ground around him. So he goes out and rounds up as many as he can Yeah. To fit in his room and

Cris: And then in the morning they all gone. He's still asleep and he get Dan wakes him up. He's like, you wanted to see? Common. Sea. Yeah. Yeah.

Reegs: And so he goes back to the village to see, and then there's just a really brutal scene here with a dog running and a kid runs after the dog and they just go around the corner and it hits a landmine and he's just blown to pieces.

The kid like, and there's bits everywhere. And then he goes to like cradle the body and it's like only

Pete: the No more legs.

Sidey: torso.

Ugh.

Reegs: Yeah. [00:11:00] So,

Yeah.

Cris: And it is, it almost kind of makes the point there in my

view

was the point that I need to do something for him, kind of that that was where he, when he kind of holds that kid, it's

Reegs: like,

Cris: this

kid's here, I need to help

Reegs: Well it's certainly a turning point in, in the film and in the, in his life. Yeah. You know, he's like shaken by this and he goes back home. And he gets like an offscreen vision, doesn't he? They don't tell us. But he's compelled to build a church. Yeah. And start fundraising. And it goes on a little cycle of him going backwards and forwards from Uganda and then coming and Sudan and then coming back to raise money, asking the local community who at first very receptive to the idea and then become resistant as he throws absolutely everything into it.

At the expense of. Like he doesn't even know his own daughter's birthday, does he? Towards

Cris: To open the safe

Reegs: open the safe that right at the end for the money that he needs. 'cause he's, he's like given up so much for everything that's happening in, in Africa. [00:12:00] Donny has also moved into his house and become, they've sort of helped him get clean.

Cris: Yeah.

Reegs: And in one of the least believable things outside of like porn, he gives like the daughter his. Daughter, Sam's daughter, who's, who looks about 17, I dunno how, how old she's supposed to be playing, but he reads her a bedtime story

Sidey: like kisses her and

Reegs: I was like, this is, he's gonna fuck her next.

I know. I've seen this

Pete: There's because he, the, the thing is he, him and

Cris: daughter keep playing this game. I'm saying

Pete: string,

Cris: say bing, whatever it is. And, and he's like, yeah, that's strange. That was strange. But anyway. Yeah.

Reegs: So, eventually, right, the machine gunny preachy element comes out when he starts getting, he gets drawn into that attack that we saw at the beginning on the village in the LRA and he ends up fighting back because he obviously has a history with guns and being

Pete: violent.

Yeah, but this

Cris: the thing there, there's a couple of points where, dang, the, the, in the military, they're like, oh, this gun is not [00:13:00] very good. And he kind of looks at it, opens it, and he's like, well, because it's dirty, you need to clean it once a day.

You need to. And it's like,

Reegs: they didn't even know that they're supposed to be soldiers.

Cris: And he is like, have you

Pete: been in the military?

Cris: He is like, no, I just like my guns

proper American.

Reegs: And he's kind of famous through his exploits, the white preacher and people come looking for him. And that sort of thing. And it's, there's, there's a kid. When he is teaching some kids to play baseball, and a young girl is brought in and she dies there and he's absolutely enraged and he decide, he's like, I can't be passive anymore.

So he creates a roadblock and fires an RPG. Like he just goes full Rambo,

Cris: Fires

Reegs: like fires an RPG at these guys kills about four of them helpfully managing not to kill any of the

Pete: child's. Yes.

Cris: Who, who are in the back of the

Pete: truck.

Reegs: dozens of them. And they take the children back to this like orphanage that he's going.

So, and he starts this thing now of going out and finding kids and stopping Roblox and bringing them back.

Pete: And there is a point where he says, how many

Cris: there's the president of. Sudan.

Reegs: Yeah, [00:14:00] Joseph Co. Well, you've got Joseph Coney in this and John Garang there, the people at

Cris: Garang was the, the the good guy. Yeah. Connie's the bad guy. But Garang

Pete: comes to, to,

Reegs: I remember this when the world was briefly obsessed by this guy, Joseph Coney. Do you remember

Sidey: Yeah,

Cris: I

Reegs: there was like memes and shit about him for about a year or two.

Yeah.

Cris: I mean, he's, yeah. Not a nice guy. But anyway, Garran comes

Pete: to, to his orphanage and he's

Cris: like, what are you doing here? But he's like, look, I'm we have about over 200 children here and we're feeding down the hill there, another thousand.

Reegs: Mm-hmm.

Sidey: Right.

Cris: Right. That's, you know,

I, I'm not, I, I don't say this to me, but if that's real numbers, it's a drop in the ocean, obviously, in terms of Africa, but.

Something.

Sidey: Yeah.

mm-hmm.

Pete: Rather than

Cris: Anyway, it was, and and he's got this interaction, you need to come with me to Moscow or to Russia for this peace

Reegs: The peace talks. Yeah.

Cris: he's like, well,

Pete: what am I gonna

Cris: do in a fancy suit? And in he is like, yeah, but sometimes you have to speak to people like blah, blah, blah. And he just [00:15:00] kind of shows his struggle going. He goes to his former boss asking for money. They have this massive cocktail party. He gives him a check for $150.

And he's got a house that's costs millions and whatever. You can see that people drinking margaritas and all that. He has all these other things, and it is just, he goes to the bank manager and he is like, you need to gimme more money. You need to give him more money. He's the

Reegs: Yeah. First they get behind him, but

Cris: then

it's like, I

Reegs: the well is

Cris: what you're doing, but

Reegs: He's remortgaged his house to do it. He's sold everything. He's got to do it, you know, it's all built up. And his experiences out there are getting more and more bleak. Right. There's the scenes where they used children that is.

Bait basically tie them down to, for his, 'cause he's going out to rescue them and they use actual children as bait to try and kill him. And yeah, grim, horrible, horrible stuff. And I think it all, I mean, it, it kind of fizzles out the end of this

Cris: He does lose his mind a little bit.

He,

he gets a little bit angry, agro and a bit

Pete: [00:16:00] Mental again,

Cris: without any drugs this time. But we,

Reegs: well he completely abandons his family as

Cris: They do

Pete: show him drinking though. Yeah.

Cris: at one point, and he just gets fucking mental.

Reegs: There's a little bit towards the end of the film, which I think is supposed to be the point where William, the boy who is the, forced to kill his

Cris: the one with the scar start

Reegs: of the film with the scar he ends up at the orphanage and he tells Sam his story and he, he tells him that, you know, the fight is already lost.

If you become full of

Cris: Well, he's about to commit

Reegs: Yeah.

It's, it's all bleak

Cris: That's, that's the, that's the implication I got. Because he has a gun. He's got No, he is got the gun. And he has a gun and he just kind of pointed at himself and then he hears the kid.

Pete: Yes. Yeah.

Reegs: yeah, yeah.

Cris: out the door. Yeah. And just basically walks in. He is like, he puts the gun at the back and the, the kid is the first time the kid speaks in that night.

And then in the morning he comes out and starts playing with a football because he's trying to teach, obviously he's American in this movie. He's trying to teach these kids to play [00:17:00] baseball. They, they basically, the first thing they do, they drop the ball and they start trying to play football with

Sidey: it.

Pete: They just

Cris: all, all run up to the ball. So, and he kind of starts playing by himself and, and that's when. It kind of turns from

Him trying

to commit suicide and kind of end it. And because there's no hope to,

Reegs: he's kind of spiritually revitalized by his conversation with William.

And then it ends on this kind of note that some kids have been. Abducted. So he goes off in full on mission and they find them and. This time because what had happened before, there'd been an earlier mission where they'd

Pete: gone out.

Cris: they found them in the hole.

Reegs: left kids behind because they're just too many of them to rescue.

And when they came back, they just found burned bodies really grim. So this time he stays behind, they send off a load of kids and it's just left with

Cris: and then it just

Pete: shows the waiting

Reegs: the

Cris: kind of the helicopter camera where Yeah, the, him and a few guys with guns stay with the rest of the kids

Pete: and the other one go with the truck. And then

Cris: there's the

Reegs: we get some text about how this [00:18:00] LRA, this organization that was operating in Sudan, responsible for 400,000 murders and 40,000 child abductions who are

Cris: Most of them sex. Yeah.

Reegs: murdered, or, you know, sexually trafficked or whatever, or put to

Pete: work as

child.

So,

Reegs: soldiers. And then you do get some black and white pictures of the real Sam Childers his wife and his daughter of the orphanage and all that stuff.

And then probably the best bit of it, the pictures are followed by a short, black and white home video

Pete: Yes. talking

Cris: was hoping you have that written down. Yeah. Well

done.

Reegs: he asks the question, if your child was abducted, if I said to you I can bring your child home, does it matter how I bring them that's how it ends.

Yeah,

Cris: I dunno. I like this movie. I know it's got other connotations, the white savior and all that.

This is a real guy that did all these things.

Pete: The

Cris: movie kind of depicts him as not perfect and definitely not the loving. We, we've seen it before where they did a biopic and[00:19:00]

they

kind of romanticized the guy at home. Yeah. But. Oh, I dunno if he, if he touches Mrs. Or whatever or what happened, but this isn't a, a romantic movie or this is quite heavy, I think.

Reegs: Mm-hmm.

Pete: And

Cris: I,

Reegs: sort of wanted to have its cake and eat it in that respect. 'cause it wanted you to think it was like a serious thinky movie, but it also wanted you to have like him dressed up in a bandana firing RPGs at people as well.

Yeah,

Cris: I dunno. I

Pete: liked it. It was, it was

Cris: a little bit too long.

Reegs: Yeah,

little bit too

long. It

was way too long. I didn't like this very much. I thought it was a very solemn, dower drama that had like very little, it didn't ask any real questions about the implications of what he was doing out there. And I, you did say it has that troubling white savior element.

To it. There are big questions to be asked about that, but this movie doesn't ask them. It's just kind of sentimental and [00:20:00] moish. It wanted to be that silly action movie as well as this meditation on redemption. But yeah, I'm afraid like uninspired directing and bland pacing and shoddy acting and.

The guy was so extremely unlikable you know, just made it, oh, and the editing was all over the place with numerous like time

Pete: and

Yeah. I, I didn't understand that But,

Reegs: then sometimes it was like three years later, five years earlier and all this sort of stuff. Yeah, not for me.

Sidey: Did you see the financials on it?

Reegs: No, I didn't.

I just didn't buy how he goes from like being like a stabby, like stabbing vagrants to going to church, to blowing up black people within about like 15

Cris: Yeah. It just went way too quickly in a way, and yeah,

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: Budget for it was 30 million US.

Yeah. Do you think it made money or didn't make any money? I

Reegs: think it lost.

Sidey: it made 3.3 million. Yeah. Which is not

great.

Cris: It does feel like that. To [00:21:00] be fair, when you watch it and you say 30 million for,

Pete: what is it,

Sidey: Something like that.

Cris: something like that?

Reegs: I think it's

Sidey: I mean, how, what

Reegs: this movie for?

Really? Like Christian, Christian extremists who want to

Cris: Not even.

it's not

that much about Christianity. He still kills

Reegs: It's very much about Christianity that's beating me over the head with it, like the whole way through. I don't like always very religious. Anyway, themes like that. But

Sidey: Jerry in it? Is he, is he looking good?

Reegs: Yeah, he does look

Pete: good. He

Cris: good. Yeah, he looks buff.

Reegs: I mean, he's, he's such an asshole in this, like he's

Sidey: he's, max acts

around

Reegs: his

misses. He's trying to save him and

Sidey: I prefer him, you know, in like a geo storm or Greenland

Reegs: something. A bit sier,

Sidey: something falling.

Yeah, a building a country. Yeah, a landscape.

Cris: look, everything's falling around them in this movie,

Pete: but you know,

Sidey: that it seems a bit yeah. Light on Ls

Pete: I, well,

Reegs: I just, I generally don't think. Right. I know what you're saying about all, all those kids that were safe, but there's gotta be better ways of doing it than sending like [00:22:00] drug adult soft

Sidey: soft power

Reegs: white guys from the US over there with shotguns.

Do you know what I mean? That

Sidey: no. I dunno what you mean.

Cris: But

Reegs: best way to

Pete: the argument to that

Sidey: of them,

Pete: war also.

Reegs: yeah.

Sidey: they only say one. That's the problem

Pete: in, in terms of

Cris: if you ever go to Africa and you see what's to be seen and the real, you're not going to own a safari to Kenya.

Reegs: Yeah.

Cris: That's probably the people that you need there.

Without me being too funny and I'm

Pete: not

Reegs: well, but the real guy as well, also like, because they paint him as a white savior in this, the truth is important. And he was not loved by John Garang at all. There was no, he wasn't invited to any of those peace talks. They knew he was a fucking nutter as well.

So, yeah. Anyway, strong

Cris: Very,

yeah.

Pete: Obviously.