Overview: Gerard Butler stars as Sam Childers, a drug-dealing criminal who undergoes an astonishing spiritual transformation and makes a life-changing decision to travel to war-torn East Africa.

DVD Verdict: Yes, I knew going into this film that it was based on a true story, but simply watching all the REAL photos and videotape of the REAL Sam Childers in action (back in the day, and quite recently too) I was blown away that Butler had nailed this guy's unrelenting perseverance to a tee! This movie is incredible, you can never take your eyes off of it, and whilst all the time you are waiting for Childers to take a bullet (especially when Kony puts a bounty on his head), there is never really a time when you think he can't survive all that he is given.

The film starts in Sudan in 2003 and shows a village being burnt to the ground, but not before the pilledging, and plundering, and raping, and killing of young and old - all brought about by (the now fugitive) warlord Joseph Kony. We then go back a "few years earlier" to Pennsylvania, where Childers (Butler) is getting out of jail. Met by his long-suffering wife, Michelle Monaghan, he soon gets back into his bad ways re: drink, drugs, whoring, and robbing and killing!

She has found The Lord since he was last away, he thinks that's funny, until one night he nearly kills a hitchhiker on the side of the road. Soon he joins her in Church, becomes re-baptised and slowly, but surely Childers takes on a whole new God-empowered persona. He builds his own church across the street from their new house, as now he has his own building contractor company, and when a visiting Pastor comes over from Uganda to tell of the troubles over there too, it's then he knows what he has to do.

And therein falls the last two thirds of this glorious film. Childers invests all his time and efforts into building an Orphanage in Uganda, one that gets burnt down the first time, but not the second. He tries to make the streets safe for the kids (that are everywhere, scattered after the Kony raids), and even joins in when it's time to fight the rebels - hence the term, Machine Gun Preacher.

At the end of the fim, which I won't give away, the credits roll and reveal that Amnesty International estimates that Kony and the LRA are responsible for over 400,000 murders and 40,00 child abductions alone! And that, to this day, Sam Childers STILL fights for the children of the Southern Sudan and Northern Uganda. This is a Widescreen Presentation (2.40:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs and comes with the Special Features of: