GERARD Butler plays thug-turned-guerrilla humanitarian Sam Childers in this adaptation of a real story.

Childers abandons his family to wage a one-man war in the Sudan.

The film opens with a night-time attack on a village and the sickening image of a young boy forced to bludgeon his weeping mother to death.

On this most primal level at least, the film hits hard.

Violent biker Childers emerges from prison, seemingly intent on returning to his boozy ways.

Then, miraculously, he finds God at the church attended by wife Lynn and is moved by a sermon about Africa. He decides to be a good Christian and travel to war-torn Sudan.

There he takes up arms to protect children from violence.

The true story that underpins this uneven fiction is extraordinary, attesting to the endurance of the human spirit in the face of unspeakable evil.

But the chronology of the script is slightly confusing and the film feels overlong.