Machine Gun Preacher
Problem #1: The Title.
I was expecting to see something like Hobo With a Shotgun. Instead this was a four-hour commercial against Joseph Kony -- who I thought was an Internet meme. Oh, it only lasted two hours? Seemed longer.
Problem #2: The Lead
The movie struggled with Gerard DePardieu -- pardon, Gerard Butler -- in the lead as his accent swirled back and forth and his eyeball popping rage face was difficult to watch. He was good in 300 and in Phantom of the Opera, but has pretty much sucked baby-eating dingo ass in the few forgettable romantic comedies and other films he's been in. He wasn't abysmal here, but the movie would have benefited from a better lead.
Problem #3: The Story
The movie meandered, left threads just hanging and had real difficulty justifying the motivations of the characters. It also skipped ahead with little to no exposition. It started in gripping fashion by showing the abduction of children and the atrocities they were forced to commit. But then it dawdled around with biker prisoner Butler, biker Butler, converted Butler, inspired Butler, etc. all the while never really establishing any real connection with the characters.
He's an asshole. He's an addict. He kills a bum. Goes to church one time and is a preacher. What?
The film really struggled with story pacing. In one WTF sequence, his wife stencils the name of a business on his truck, the family walks down the road to a huge house that's theirs (this after living in a shithole of a trailer seconds before), then they're sitting at the dinner table and his daughter has aged six or seven years with no explanation. Wife hasn't aged, he's still wearing the same fucking shirt, mom hasn't aged -- but the kid's grown up. What?
And then there's his "transformation." God loves everybody! God wants wolves with ripping teeth, tearing at the evils of the world! Be a wolf! Fuck all of you sonsabitches!
The guy's real story is probably a good one, but here it's really poorly told. It never managed to build any connection with any of the characters and the ending was even more WTF. It was like "oh, we're out of film so let's stop here and we'll stick some words up there that says what happened to everybody."