Machine gun Preacher - Recensioni

Una recensione che stronca la recitazione di Gerry... debbo dire che questo tipo davvero non capisce niente!!! tra l'altro dire che Gerry sarebbe in grado di recitare bene,ma non lo fa...mi sembra una assoluta contraddizione...


http://www.lutontoday.co.uk/news/blogs/nei...11_11_1_3207077


Machine Gun Preacher

When will Gerard Butler act in a movie? Any guesses? Anyone know when he will look like he is making any kind of effort at inhabiting a character?

I am sure he is capable of it. But again, in this disappointing turn from normally reliable director Marc Forster (Finding Neverland) he is just a gruff, two-dimensional brooder and the schtick is getting old.

The film tells the story of a former drug-dealing biker who finds God and becomes a missionary helping Sudanese children who have become embroiled in militia violence.

You couldn’t make it up, and apparently they haven’t as it is based on a true story.

I’m sure the original man it’s based on is happy, aesthetically, that Gerard Butler played him, but as the years pass he may have wished for someone a little more inclined to act, or try.

solleviamo le quotazioni:qui gerry viene definito 'coinvolto,persino carismatico.'sempre credibile'.. e il film becca tre stelline!


www.thisislondon.co.uk/film/review-...her---review.do

Dir: Marc Forster.
Cast: Souleymane Sy Savane, Madeline Carroll, Michelle Monaghan, Corey Large, Michael Shannon, Gerard Butler, Kathy Baker
Country: US.
Year: 2011.
Duration: 129mins

Machine Gun Preacher - review

Muscular Christianity: Sam Childers (Gerald Butler) sets off to defend his orphanage from a vicious rebel militia

By David Sexton
4 Nov 2011



Sam Childers is a former criminal, alcoholic and addict from Pennsylvania who, in 1992, just before he turned 30, found God at a church meeting and turned his life around.

In 1998, he went with a mission group to work in Southern Sudan and saw a child killed by a landmine. He pledged himself to helping the people of this war-ravaged country. On a second visit, while running a mobile clinic, he was told by God to build an orphanage in the village of Nimule on the Ugandan border. He sold his construction business back home and created The Children's Village, run by his organisation, Angels of East Africa.

It is in an area where the savage rebel militia, the Lord's Resistance Army, operates, kidnapping children to become sex slaves and child soldiers, murdering villagers in their thousands. In his former life as a Hell's Angel gang member, Childers had been a "Shotgunner", an armed guard for drug dealers. Now he took to defending his orphanage with an AK-47 - and then going on aggressive raids against the LRA to rescue children from them. Thirteen years on, his orphanage, the largest in Southern Sudan, currently houses several hundred children.

In 2009, Childers published a memoir, Another Man's War. Now, with his co-operation, his story has been made into this film, starring tall, soulful brute Gerard Butler as Childers, sexy Michelle Monaghan as his former stripper wife Lynn, and Michael Shannon as Donnie, a composite figure representing his former biker pals.

The movie was shot with South Africa standing in for Sudan and Detroit for Pennsylvania. Its director is Marc Forster, whose previous films include Finding Neverland, The Kite Runner and, most recently, the hyperactive James Bond outing, Quantum of Solace, and he has made Machine Gun Preacher look like a full-scale action movie, not a quasi-documentary, even though it's photographed mainly with available light.

Childers has expressed his satisfaction with the result, saying indeed he's watched it four times and cried every time. "I don't want people walking out of the theatre thinking the film is about Sammy Childers. The movie's about you. And mostly everyone who walks out of the theatre is thinking 'I'm not doing enough. I want to do more'. That's what the movie's all about." So it's a fundraiser, a call to arms.

Gerard Butler is involving, even charismatic, always plausible as a man of contained and then uncontained violence, from his first words, as he leaves jail - "you all go fuck yourselves now" - to the point where, furiously preaching to his flock back home, he tells them: "God don't want sheep - he wants wolves to fight his fight; men and women with teeth to tear at the evil out there."

Childers himself says: "It's hard for me to watch the first part of the movie because it tells who I was, and I just thank God I'm not that person today." But he is that person, using that violence differently - as the film shows, to its credit.

Where Machine Gun Preacher works less well is as a sustained and connected adventure. Picking out key scenes from a real-life story that runs over a period of years, it feels more like a collection of set pieces, illustrations almost.

When the orphanage is attacked at night by LRA bandits there's a big battle sequence, but just when it seems they must all be overrun and slaughtered, the scene stops. When it picks up next morning, there's no explanation of how they survived.

The central story, not being generated by a writer with an entirely free hand, proceeds inexorably along the rails of its real-life source. Such major events as setting up a successful construction company, buying a big house and building a new church happen just like that. Every time Childers sets off to rescue children, he succeeds - and we see this once too often. Other scenes are soupy. When he's feeling desperate, Childers is brought back from the brink by a boy whom he has rescued. Tormented and silent until then, the child wisely counsels: "If we allow ourselves to be full of hate, then they've won - you must not let them take your heart."

The way Childers's story is delivered primarily as his own struggle for redemption allows for no broader perspective on the violence raging in this part of Africa. We're told at one point, "the Muslim north has been killing the Christians in the south for many years", but that's about as far as it goes. It's true that the Lord's Resistance Army, which has a demented ideology somehow combining "traditional African religion", witchcraft, Christianity and nationalism under a rule of terror, is not well understood by anybody. But here it is just the devil.

With Childers dedicated to rescuing only innocent children, including those already forcibly conscripted into the LRA, the need for any more extended understanding of what is going on in this part of Africa is sidestepped. As is the dodgy conclusion that only a white outsider can effectively help in this mess.

Don't leave before the final credits have rolled, though. Suddenly, we see cameo footage of the real Childers, firing a pump action shotgun. He's shorter, fatter, older and less handsome than Butler, of course - but he has great presence, nonetheless. Perhaps the film should have been a regular documentary, after all? Even though Gerard Butler would then have been robbed of his dream role.

Edited by sabrinta - 4/11/2011, 16:21

Una lunga recensione,non negativa(dà al film 3 stelle,infine) nella quale però si batte molto sull'idea di 'una grande occasione mancata'...

http://mediaupdate.co.za/?IDStory=44380

The missed opportunity that is Machine Gun Preacher
Published: 18 January 2012
It’s that time again ... time for the Americans to save the Africans from themselves.


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By Marie Straub

I admit, the above was at least partly my expectation when I went to watch Machine Gun Preacher. I got less than, more than and exactly what I expected. As horribly contradictory as that sounds, it’s true, but perhaps I should begin by breaking down what those expectations were. I expected the "horrors" of Africa to be on display (they were). I expected said "horrors" to face the wrath of Gerard Butler with a mullet in a biker jacket, with some charismatic Jesus on the side (right again). This, I figured, would in all likelihood be an "America, fuck yeah!" movie, without any of the irony of Team America: World Police (OK, here I was a little off – there was no irony, but there wasn’t quite the "America, fuck yeah!" either). I expected to be highly annoyed, but I was neither spot on nor pleasantly surprised. There was, at least to some degree, an effort to engage with the "horrors" of Africa they had on display, rather than allowing them to exist merely so that an American hero could rise. This, I suppose, is an improvement. That improvement could, in fact, have been driven home in a complex and fascinating film if the filmmakers hadn’t missed the moral ambiguity that really should have been at the heart of this story, but hey, at least they tried to hit it, right? That’s pretty much the best recommendation you can give this film – a nice try – but let’s take a closer look.

Somewhere in South Sudan, a young boy is being forced to kill his mother and join the ranks of Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). It’s not pretty. Meanwhile, across the world in Pennsylvania, Sam Childers (Butler) is a drug addict fresh out of jail (and telling the police to go fuck themselves as he leaves). He’s the kind of guy who, when he gets back to his trailer (of course he lives in a trailer), is angry when he finds out that his wife (Michelle Monaghan) has stopped stripping and insists she gets herself back on the pole. That’s not going to happen, however, as she has gotten clean and found Jesus. Sam is not happy, in fact he heads out to get his first fix, and later to rob a crack house with his addict buddy Donnie (Michael Shannon). When a random hitchhiker pulls a knife on the two of them, Sam will, in a fit of rage, not just overpower him, but also stab him to within an inch of his life. When he arrives home – partly wasted and covered in blood – he will cry out to his wife for help. She will take him to church, assuring him that no one cares if he has good shoes or not, and when he rises from the baptism water, everything will be different. For one, it will start him on a path that will lead him to that boy in South Sudan.

Does all of this sound a bit ... I don’t know, for the lack of a better word – ‘hokey’? That’s because it is. Charismatic churches are so often the butt of jokes, even among church-going folk, that it’s unsurprising that filming sequences of this type in a way that made them seem credible was always going to be difficult. But difficult is not impossible. The truth is, church has never looked so unattractive or uncompelling, but then, neither has Gerard Butler. While Butler plays the angry violent addict and the angry warrior saving children on either side of this film well, his weepy bloody turnaround is about as convincing as his finding Jesus (by which I mean ‘not at all’). The tough stuff in between is, as it turns out, above his capabilities and it’s a stumbling block the film never recovers from. But then, the script doesn’t help either. Covering a number of years – from Sam’s release from prison to his crime-filled days, his turnaround, his decision to build a church for outcasts in America, how he ended up preaching, his decision to go to Sudan, deciding to join the fight there, being pushed to the very brink, and how he made his way back again – the film is ultimately a mundane exercise in laying out the events of Sam’s life one after the other. It feels like an interview with the guy (this film is based on the real Sam Childers, after all) cut-and-pasted on to screen. His motivations are never credibly presented as he goes from "I think I'll build a church for outcasts" to "I think I'll go to Sudan" without ever seeming compelled in his decisions.

The scriptwriter, Jason Keller, has not made something of Sam’s story and the director, Marc Forster, has failed to take a stance on it where one is sorely needed – the scenes in church seem filmed by someone who doesn’t believe in them but is not brave enough to let his film make that assertion. Ask any artist, judging your subject matter is always going to be problematic. Despite this, and this is the one credit we must give Butler, there are a few moments when he manages to pull his performance back from the brink of the unbelievable – one preaching session in which he adamantly declares that “God doesn’t only call the good” being a case in point – but for the most part, it is clear that with this role he has bitten off far more than he can chew (I say this as something of a fan of much of his previous work).

As the credits roll, footage of the real Sam Childers is screened, including a moment in which he asks if your own child were kidnapped and he could bring it back to you, whether you would care about what methods he used to do so. Right there is what should have been the heart of this film. Sam Childers starts out an angry violent man hiding in drugs and ends up a man channelling his anger and violence towards warlords in order to save children in the name of God. Does that make his violence and seemingly continued inability to contain his rage OK, just because it is now in a new setting? Is it justifiable even? Could you make the argument that he is really called by God? There’s enough there to possibly make a few lukewarm atheists ask the question and there is, in the story of Sam Childers, a film worth making and watching. Unfortunately, this is not the film that was made. There are a few spare moments when they dare to tread on this ground, but mostly Forster tip-toes around them and Keller seems to have missed them altogether. It’s disappointing work from Forster who has given us such films as Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland and Stranger Than Fiction.

It’s not especially bad, if you’re a softie like me you’ll even cry in parts, but it’s not especially good either. Mostly, I was disappointed by what could have been – three stars at a push

Un'altra recensione breve che assegna la film 3 stelline:

http://www.timeslive.co.za/entertainment/m...ne-gun-preacher

Un recensione giapponese che dà al film ben 4 stelle su 5:

'Machine Gun Preacher'
The man who hoed his row (and then some)

By KAORI SHOJI
'Machine Gun Preacher" is extraordinary on two levels: First, it's based on a true story about a man who went from a life of violent crime and drug addiction to building an orphanage in war-torn Sudan. And second, he did it all without looking at a computer screen, ever.

Machine Gun Preacher Rating: (4 out of 5)



Okay, maybe the real Sam Childers tweets and scrolls an iPhone once in a while. But in "Machine Gun Preacher," Childers — as portrayed by Gerard Butler — behaves as though his fingers have never tapped on a keyboard and the only thing the word Mac has ever conjured for him is a burger. Hairy and sweaty and sporting facial pores the size of saucers, Butler's Childers is probably listed under "testosterone" in the dictionary. He's an ape, but a wonderfully courageous and inspiring one.

And who better to play him than Hollywood's go-to guy for sheer, undiluted maleness: Gerard "300" Butler? You look at the man and you want to run for cover, lest he come chasing after you with those hammy fists, roaring some indecipherable abuse and possibly belching at the same time.

Sure, Butler has starred in gentlemanly roles before ("Nim's Island" anyone?) and has a sizable number of rom-coms under his belt ("The Bounty Hunter," "The Ugly Truth"), but truth be told, he's best when in full-throttle ape mode, with no love relationships to hinder his path, no digital device to cloud his mind and preferably as little clothing as possible. In "Machine Gun Preacher," his outfit consists mainly of tank tops and cargoes. Rambo style.

Before his African stint, Childers was a biker/crack addict/alcoholic bum in the American Deep South, just out of prison and already yelling at his wife, Lynn (Michelle Monaghan). He's mad because in his absence Lynn started going to church and quit her job as a stripper, and she now has no cash to buy his heroin. Plus, his young daughter, Paige (Madeline Carroll) is scared to death of his fuming, hulking frame and won't go near him.

Pretty soon, Sam is sitting on the toilet in a bar shooting up, then he's robbing/knifing a passerby and beating a couple of guys to a pulp (not necessarily in that sequence). Talk about a guy who wastes no time.

The story doesn't linger on what a god-awful A-hole Childers is, mainly because his bad, bad back-story is too hefty to pack into a mere two hours. Director Marc Forster moves at the speed of light: Sam receives a full-immersion baptism, finds God, hugs Lynn and tells her he's gonna change. This isn't too difficult, as Sam is a contractor and builder and there are plenty of jobs around for muscle-bound born-again Christians such as himself.

But in the late 1990s, after he builds a new house for the family and reconciles with Paige, Sam learns of the ongoing Second Sudanese Civil War and is stirred to action. A man of few words, he mutters, "I reckon those people need all the help they can get," and boards a plane.

Sam seems to have his work cut out for him. Holding no truck with red tape and refusing to abide by the rules, he gets each job done the violent way, and then takes his hoe to another row, and another. In a matter of months, he's become his own one-man army, saving orphans in Uganda and Sudan while warding off blows from the kidnapping, human-trafficking, genocidal Lord's Resistance Army.

Forster knows how to build powerful drama on the shoulders of desperate men (see "Quantum of Solace," "The Kite Runner" and "Monster's Ball"), and he seems to have no qualms or fear about drawing their flaws and thorned/craggy edges. The character of Sam is intriguing because he deploys his brutish nature and dark, ungovernable guilt complex to full advantage in helping others. He finds plenty of critics who call him a glory-seeking hypocrite. He runs into a whole lot of resistance when trying to enlist aid from his fellow white men.

None of this dents his armor, and he continues to work like someone who has about two hours to redeem himself before falling headlong into the flames of hell. Every single minute counts. Every hour spent not doing something for the orphans is an hour wasted. Back home, Lynn and Paige feel alienated and Sam's congregation clamor for attention. But in Africa, the work never lets up. Every day brings news of some unspeakable atrocity, coupled with a plea for immediate help.

The film is as rough-hewn and bitter on the palate as its hero, but the quality of filmmaking is ultimately beside the point. That Sam Childers really exists is what counts. And for that, one can only be grateful.