Trailer Tracks with Sam Strange: MACHINE GUN PREACHER

Movie commercials offer us a great service; they not only show us which upcoming movies look good, but also which upcoming movies look like Hitler Turds (turds that waste no energy being anywhere except directly beneath your nose). In honor of this profound art, which I partake in from time to time, I give you TRAILER TRACKS, a weekly examination of upcoming movie commercials: what they say, what they don't say, and what they say accidentally about the product being sold to you, the excited chump.

This week's entry:

Machine Gun Preacher

(Dir. Marc Forster)

Introduction:

America is simply the greatest country in the world. A lot of other countries have problems with genocide and whatnot, when all they really need is an American to size things up and get to work cleaning house of bad guys, whatever color they may be.

Americans have the power to do this because they believe in God and God is awesome. Many people think God is awesome because you can pray to him before you eat, and he'll make your food taste better and wash it of MSG. But the truth is, God is awesome mostly because he occasionally lets his American preachers wield machine guns. Machine guns kill people.

The Set Up:

So it looks like a lot of people are having a rough time in Africa. Everyone is trying to kill everyone else, and the people there let flies run around on their face. God wants to clean all this up, and to do that he needs a hero. Of course, God is smart enough to know that those unsexed twerps in preacher school don't have it in them to be heroes. What God needs is a badass.

God finds a candidate in Gerald Butler, a motorcycle-driving southern drug dealer type. We see him beating people up, and he talks about all the bad things he's done, and before we know it, he's crying in the bathroom, ready to accept the Lord into his heart so long as it saves him from jail.

It's probably not that hard a transition for him, honestly. He can still ride his motorcycle. They totally have clubs for that, and they hardly ever get laughed at to their faces. It's not like being Amish or something.

So now that God has his man, it's only a matter of time before he sees a commercial where flies run around on a kid's face. Five minutes later, he's totally in Africa, asking for a sit-down with their president so he can slap him in the face and say, "What the fuck, brother?"

The Problem:

The Africa problem won't be solved with attitude alone. It will also require gumption, perseverance, and a radio station that plays "Hotel California" at least once an hour. There are killers everywhere and they actually make people sleep outside. This appalls Gerald Butler, and he decides he won't be satisfied until he builds a Christian orphanage. Kids can sleep there, so long as they dump their eight armed elephant god and let God get under the covers, too.

But Africa is tough. And as soon as Africa hears Gerald Butler is building an orphanage, Africa blows the orphanage up. Gerald Butler's wife stands in front of a shitload of eggs and tells him to build another orphanage. He thinks that's good advice. But as soon as he hangs up God tells him that the next orphanage will get blown up too, and the only way to ensure a safe orphanage is to grab a machine gun and kill Africa. Because this is God we're talking about here, the "machine gun" is actually a rocket launcher.

The Solution:

Kill the shit out of Africa! What else? You have a rocket launcher and a celestial license to kill. What are you waiting for?

So Gerald Butler kills Africa and all the kids there accept God into their hearts and no longer have flies running around their faces. I predict Gerald Butler gets a heroic bullet in the back for his troubles, but that's a good thing because heaven is better than earth, and we should all be committing suicide anyway.

Summation:

This is one of those "mini-movie" trailers that lays out the entire three act story arc for us because the end is all anyone would want to see anyway, but to show footage from it means explaining everything that came before. These are great trailers because they're free to watch, and once you do, you no longer have to see the whole film.

The only perplexing element is Gerald Butler. I simply don't understand him as an actor. He has an interesting Mel Gibson thing going on, but he's determined to deny it with romantic comedies and films with illusions of grander. In this one he sports a slightly southern American accent that can't even hold consistency for two minutes of trailer. He's got this man's man exterior, but at every turn, he makes it clear that beneath his chest beats the heart of a giant pussy. I don't trust him, and he's not my friend.

I also fear a lot of good natured people will buy tickets for Machine Gun Preacher simply because they mistake it for a sequel to Hobo with a Shotgun. I feel so sorry for these people. They are most certainly not going to get what they paid for.

Also, check out the Machine Gun's Preacher's awesome shirt. If only they had someone with a shirt like this in Rwanda...