Machine Gun Preacher (2011)

Based on the life of Sam Childers

Sam Childers (Gerard Butler) AKA Crazy Horse was a violent drug dealer from a biker gang, and he’s just been released from a Pennsylvania State prison; his wife Lynn (Michelle Monaghan) is waiting outside to take him home. Very few things have changed while he’s been away but he’s about to learn the main changes revolve around Lynn; she’s found Jesus and she wants Sam to find him too. Lynn has become a faithful follower at his mother’s church and tells him that she quit dancing at the stripper bar; she has a new job in a factory with good benefits. Sam is angered by this news and it gives him the perfect excuse to make an immediate return to the biker bar and, his first homecoming drug fix. From there it doesn’t take long to get right back into his old gang ways; until a violent run-in with a hitchhiker causes him to reevaluate the direction of his life. He accepts Jesus and gets baptized, but it takes an offer from a new friend after the devastation of a severe event for him to find a purpose; to help other people in need by using his building skills. Time passes, he’s been able to stay clean and turn his life around and after an inspirational sermon at the church by a pastor from Uganda; he begins to see a new purpose, a way to reach more people that may need his help even more than those right here at home, but he’ll have to go to Africa to do it. While there Sam meets Deng and Marco; Deng explains they are freedom fighters for SPLA (Sudanese People’s Liberation Army) they’re here to protect the area from rebels of the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army.) At night the LRA attack villages, killing the men, women and babies while they steal the older children to rebuild their army. This news doesn’t sit well with Sam; later he witnesses the carnage and destruction after an LRA raid, he helplessly watches while scores of newly orphaned children return home to find their families butchered and scattered about the charred remains of their village. Sam Childers can finally hear his own calling in the grieving cries of the children left behind. His calling leads him to build a new village with an orphanage and a church/school, and his will leads him to fight beside the SPLA against the LRA to save as many lost African children that he possibly can as The Machine Gun Preacher.

This is a true story about life changing events, the inconceivable pain and suffering of children at an intolerable level and one man's redemption to end their terror.