Last night my brother’s girlfriend, Kate and I headed to the cinema to see The Machine Gun Preacher for the absolute sole purpose of, to put it in simple terms, ogle and perve at the film’s star Gerard Bulter, of whom
we are both a little (okay a lot!) in love with! (Sorry Mike!)
We settled with our Pepsi Max and popcorn had a good old giggle at the commercials and trailers for up and coming films. Neither of us had really thought about the film we were seeing, we just needed our GB fix!
We were horrified when the opening scene was a Sudan village being destroyed and the towns’ people being shot, cut or kidnapped. Kate and I looked at each other as if to say “why are we watching this when Tin Tins playing next door?”
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| The real Sam Childers (L) and Gerard Bulter (R) |
The story of the Machine Gun Preacher is about the life’s work of Sam Childers. Sam was a broken man with a criminal and drug fuelled past. To be honest for the first 30 minutes of Gerard’s performance I started to go off not only Sam but Gerard himself who played this disturbing character alarmingly well!
Luckily with the love and support of his family and church Sam Childers became an upstanding member of his community and a pastor from Africa visited his church, telling the congregation of the plight of Sudan under the rule of Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). It’s estimated that the LRA have to date abducted around 50,000 children who have been forced to fight with them as child soldiers or have sold them into sex slavery
Sam, an owner of a construction business and his wife Lynn, decided they were in a position to help. They set up Angels of East Africa charity.
I don’t want to spoil the film too much for anyone but I spent the entire time delicately balanced emotionally between hope and helplessness, joy and disgust as Sam tries to help the Sudanese orphans.
If you get a chance please go see this film, it’s heart wrenching and at times; unbelievably hard to keep watching, but it’s worth it to learn not only Sam's story but the children’s ones too. The film is brilliantly directed by Marc Forster (who previously directed Mosters Ball, Quantum of Solace) and without bias Gerard’s best performance so far!
For more information on Angels of East Africa or Sam Childers please click here and maybe even donate a few pennies – I did!
L x
Killing Fields, Blood Diamonds, Schindlers List and others that do not readily come to mind... It went on, it goes on still and governments are well aware that it does: but in that delicate balance of political correctness, when you dig a little deeper there is bound to be found financial dependence of crooked regimes that allow it to continue. Whilst not involved with genocide the likes of Berlesconi, Papandraou all feather their respective nests and then find it hard to step down; I cannot wait until they fall from grace and have their skeletons dragged screaming from the closet.
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