"True" story of Sam Childers, who is a
former drug-dealer and general layabout who got religion, and became a
crusader for Sudanese children forced to become soldiers.
It
stars Gerard Butler, someone I rate very low in my league table of
actors mainly because of his habit of playing stupid romantic comedies
and/or generally superficial roles.
The
film doesn't show how this murderer and rabble-rouser got Jesus. He
just goes to Church, gets baptized, becomes a construction worker, sells
his motorbike and hey presto, one convert.
In
fact, the film is light on many of the details about what motivated
Childers. All of a sudden we find him moved by a minister's account of
how their "brothers" in Somalia need their help and he's upped and gone
over there to rebuild homes. Then, he takes a visit to the war-torn
north of the country and sees first-hand the true cost of civil war.
There's
little to nothing said of how he funds the work he does in Sudan, the
building of an orphanage, the constant travel back and forth between the
USA and Sudan, how he manages to keep his home and family fed in
America while he's away all the time.
In fact, it gets to the point where
he needs money to continue funding the orphanage and he sells everything
he's got at home, leaving his wife and daughter to live off whatever
money she can collect from the church.
Eventually, the film portrays him as an unbalanced man, who still lives his life fighting with a gun, in Somalia.
The latest viral Kony graphic on the interwebs draws attention to the mass murderer Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army that Amnesty International estimates has killed 400,000 people in Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan.
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