Fifteen years after hitting theaters, Gerard Butler‘s gritty revenge thriller inspired by true events appears to have found new life on streaming. Directed by German-Swiss filmmaker Marc Forster, the film sees Butler portray a former gang biker who becomes a Christian preacher and travels to East Africa, where he becomes involved in efforts to protect children affected by war. Although the film has since developed a following among viewers who consider it an underrated action drama, it struggled to impress critics and audiences at the box office when it was originally released.
Written by Jason Keller, Machine Gun Preacher is based primarily on Christian motorcyclist Sam Childers‘ 2009 autobiography, Another Man’s War, while also drawing from Ian Urbina‘s 2010 Vanity Fair article, “Get Kony.” The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2011 before receiving a limited theatrical release in the United States on September 23, 2011.
Now, the biographical action drama is attracting renewed attention on Paramount+, ranking among the top 10 movies on the streamer in the U.S. Its resurgence, which comes three weeks after debuting on the platform, is particularly notable given how poorly it performed during its original theatrical run, suggesting that subscribers may be giving Butler’s overlooked film a second chance.
Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would Be Your Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt
Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.
🎖️Rambo
🍸James Bond
🏺Indiana Jones
🔧John McClane
🎭Ethan Hunt
01
You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.
02
You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission.
03
You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of.
04
The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.
05
How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.
06
Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.
07
Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.
08
What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.
09
Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.
10
It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one.
Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Rambo
Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
James Bond
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
Indiana Jones
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
John McClane
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Ethan Hunt
Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
Is ‘Machine Gun Preacher’ Worth Watching?
Made on a reported $30 million budget, Machine Gun Preacher grossed approximately $3.3 million worldwide, making its theatrical performance a significant disappointment. The film also received a mixed-to-negative response from critics. It currently holds a 28% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes based on 113 reviews, with the critics’ consensus describing the movie as “too shapeless and emotionally vacant to bring [Childers’] story to life.” Audiences, however, have been considerably more receptive, giving the film a 62% Popcornmeter score on the review aggregator.
Butler’s portrayal of Childers forms the foundation of Machine Gun Preacher. After traveling to Sudan and witnessing the devastation caused by the country’s civil war, Childers establishes an orphanage and becomes increasingly involved in protecting children from armed groups, including the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony. Determined to save as many lives as possible, he is willing to go through extreme measures, which has led some critics and viewers to interpret the movie through the lens of the “white savior” trope, particularly because of its depiction of an American white man taking on a heroic role in the lives of African children. Machine Gun Preacher also stars Michelle Monaghan, Kathy Baker, and Michael Shannon.
Machine Gun Preacher streams on Paramount+. Follow Collider for the latest streaming updates.
