Hollywood movie on LRA war showing at cinema

Gerald Butler acting as Sam Childers the Machine Gun Preacher in the movie.

It is one man’s extraordinary journey. Picture this; a drug addict and murderer who has had his run-ins with the police, has a stripper for a fiancé and basically lives his life upside down. But all that changes when his woman turns to God.

She leads him back to the lord and it is a journey that also restores the humane side of him, and thereby leading him to Africa and more precisely Northern Uganda. Gerald Butler leads you on a trip to the heart of the suffering, lost hope, ghastly deaths and more that characterised this war-ravaged part of Uganda at the hands of rebel leader Joseph Kony.

It is a film based on real life events and Butler plays Sam Childers, a former drug-dealer and criminal who turned a machine gun preacher that came down to save kidnapped and orphaned children.

The movie premiered last Wednesday at Cineplex Cinema- The Hub at Oasis Mall and Sam Childers was there to tell his inspiration for work that saw him journey from the US to war-torn Northern Uganda and later on South Sudan.

“When I first stepped in Northern Uganda I just could not believe what I saw. I wanted to do as much as I could. I realised that Joseph Kony was not the biggest problem but Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir who was providing the funding,” Childers who took part in some battles against the rebels says.

He revealed that the Africans in the movie were South African and that the movie was short in South Africa because there is not much infrastructure to make movies in Uganda though the scenery is great.

Good cinematography, strong and revealing dialogue, character portrayal and an emotively tied plot make Machine Gun Preacher a movie you would want to go and watch about a man who believed in nothing but began searching for something to believe in only to end up getting something worth fighting for. You might find it a tear jerker especially for the gory scenes of killing innocent children. The movie is showing at Cineplex Cinema.