Review of Machine Gun Preacher (2011) by Fadeblack — 07 Jul 2018

I was expecting a by the numbers action flick, given the reviews.....but instead was utterly blown away by what I watched. First of all, it tackles a topic that is so important yet so very, very, very few mainstream movies want to touch, which is the atrocities of civil war going on in Sudan (and similar situations across Africa.) It doesn't shy away from displaying the soul-crushing horror of what is happening, and the dangerous insanity in which it drives its protagonist in. In many ways it's about the dangers of different types of radicalism. Radicalism of terror, on one hand; but also radicalism of thinking you need to or you must save the world, which can put you on a path of destruction of everything you supposedly cherish, if not evil. At the same time, the film also goes all out on the **** giving West, which claims that it knows and that it cares about this Hell, but in actions does next to nothing, while proudly waving its little human rights flag out of its ass.

It's an infuriating movie about an infuriating crisis and a furious man, played magnificently by Gerard Butler. It has no easy answers, and or any answers at all really, which is kind of the point. You question everything - religion, civilization, humanity - including yourself, and everything you are doing, and more importantly not doing. This is the very definition of courageous movie-making. What a criminally underrated film.