Trying hard to set aside the reality (at least half the claims are patently untrue) and how much it's basically propaganda, it's just not a very good movie.
Butler is inconsistent as all get out. In tone and word. Even the script has him become much more of a barely literate redneck here and there, but he's explicitly persuasive somehow, and never at a loss for very specific. And correct wording for tons of conversations where he is persuading everyone to go his way.
Similar for other characters; the daughter is apparently intelligent, educated, but they throw in the occasional "aint" just to make sure we believe these are good old Real American people, I guess. It's weird.
It's weirdly put together, head to toe. Very typical biopic, covers too much timeframe, but also doesn't explain the time jumps so we're deeply unclear how much time has passed.
There's not a whiff of motivation. I didn't just not believe in his conversion, then visions, but I didn't see one at all. Just all of a sudden he is doing things like drawing the church and orphanage (etc) but... out of the blue. It's like they edited out scenes where he had reasons and decided this but... they didn't and instead it's just terrible film-making where you know e.g. He had a vision because has a deeply unemotional speech about having had a vision.
And his wife is All In. His whole family is. His friends are, and people he could be cometitive with in business are not. There is not a bit of palpable tension in the movie. If you say "but the LRA!" meh. Seen a good war movie? They are not all perfect friends led by perfect leaders against the enemy, but have their own tensions and worried internally or within the group.
Not here, as all too typically for this genre. Everyone is a good guy, but the Very Bad Guys, so it's boooooring. Seriously, for a movie full of ethnic-cleansing levels of atrocity, with gunfights, hard to bother paying attention to the whole thing.
Butler is inconsistent as all get out. In tone and word. Even the script has him become much more of a barely literate redneck here and there, but he's explicitly persuasive somehow, and never at a loss for very specific. And correct wording for tons of conversations where he is persuading everyone to go his way.
Similar for other characters; the daughter is apparently intelligent, educated, but they throw in the occasional "aint" just to make sure we believe these are good old Real American people, I guess. It's weird.
It's weirdly put together, head to toe. Very typical biopic, covers too much timeframe, but also doesn't explain the time jumps so we're deeply unclear how much time has passed.
There's not a whiff of motivation. I didn't just not believe in his conversion, then visions, but I didn't see one at all. Just all of a sudden he is doing things like drawing the church and orphanage (etc) but... out of the blue. It's like they edited out scenes where he had reasons and decided this but... they didn't and instead it's just terrible film-making where you know e.g. He had a vision because has a deeply unemotional speech about having had a vision.
And his wife is All In. His whole family is. His friends are, and people he could be cometitive with in business are not. There is not a bit of palpable tension in the movie. If you say "but the LRA!" meh. Seen a good war movie? They are not all perfect friends led by perfect leaders against the enemy, but have their own tensions and worried internally or within the group.
Not here, as all too typically for this genre. Everyone is a good guy, but the Very Bad Guys, so it's boooooring. Seriously, for a movie full of ethnic-cleansing levels of atrocity, with gunfights, hard to bother paying attention to the whole thing.