Brad Pitt steps into Billy Beane’s shoes as the GM and is faced with the task of rebuilding his team after three of his best players are traded following a disappointing loss in the 2001 playoffs. As one of the poorest teams in baseball (one player quickly points out that he’s never had to pay for soda in the clubhouse before), Billy is consistently frustrated when his efforts to replace his heavy hitters are thwarted or laughed at by other ball clubs. During a meeting with the Cleveland Indians, Billy meets young assistant Peter (Jonah Hill), a baseball fanatic and mathematical whiz kid, who shows Billy a new way of evaluating statistics to earn wins with mediocre players. Billy immediately poaches Peter for his own assistant, and thus begins an uphill battle to achieve the seemingly impossible.
It is a film adaptation of a book based on statistics (penned by Michael Lewis) may not sound like a laugh riot, but the sharp screenplay (written by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin) lets Pitt and Jonah Hill shine as an often-hilarious duo. Pitt’s Billy Beane is charming, if not a bit arrogant, and Hill’s straight-faced Peter is Billy’s perfect counterpart. Moneyball marks Hill’s first foray into drama, but his comedic timing is his biggest asset here, as Billy throws timid Peter right into the big leagues (pun intended) of their business behind the scenes. As Billy teaches Peter the ropes of hiring and firing in exchange for Peter’s knowledge of statistics, the symbiotic relationship creates the film’s most memorable scenes.

Sam Childers (Gerard Butler) was a drug-dealing ex-con who found God after he seemingly hit rock bottom. As a result he established a church in his hometown and, as fate would have it, made his way to East Africa. There he would eventually set up the Angels of East Africa rescue organization where he rescued hundreds of orphaned children and established his own militia to help fight against Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Machine Gun Preacher adopts Childers’ nickname and sets out to tell his story in what ends up being an emotionally impactful, somewhat manipulative and quite scattered movie.
Attempting to tell all stories at once and frequently going into traditional storytelling elements, Machine Gun Preacher bounces back and forth between Sam’s plight in East Africa, to his wife (Michelle Monahan) and daughter (Madeline Carroll) back home and the cliched and entirely unnecessary story of his drug-addict friend (Michael Shannon). Of the three stories the only one that feels at all authentic is Sam’s time in Africa and the way screenwriter Jason Keller chose to tell the story here is a bit curious.
The unforgivable acts seen on screen are heart-wrenching as a young boy is forced to kill his own mother, another is killed by a hidden land mine and more find their demise in other horrible ways. So it goes without saying that you’ll be moved when you see the effort put forth by Childers as he takes on their struggle as his own. The biggest problem I had, though, is when the audience is made to witness one terrible act of violence on a group of children only to prove a point at the end of the film. Let’s just say, you won’t expect Sam to ever leave a group of 20 or so children alone in the desert in the middle of the night ever again, but maybe that calls into question… Why would he ever do so in the first place? To prove a point silly.