'Machine Gun Preacher': Watch the Trailer for the New Gerard Butler Movie

After "300," I and a lot of like-minded action fans sort of expected Gerard Butler to dominate the landscape of all that is badass. But aside from some rather unfortunate decisions ("Gamer," anyone?), Butler has largely resigned himself to romantic comedies, of all things. And not terribly good ones.

Now, with "Machine Gun Preacher," he might take back some of that. No, despite the images the name conjures, this isn't another adaptation of a comic book you didn't know existed.

Rather, this is the based-on-a-true story of Sam Childers, a drug dealer who cleaned up his act, and in an effort to find some purpose in his life, went off to East Africa to rescue children victimized by war. He even goes so far as to lead armed missions to retrieve them. He does not, as far as I can tell, ever take vows and become an honest-to-God preacher, but hey, it's a catchy title.

Director Marc Forster has had about as many hits ("Finding Neverland," "Stranger than Fiction," "Monster's Ball") as misses ("Stay," "The Kite Runner," "Quantum of Solace"), so it will be interesting to see where this lands, even as he's deep into production on "World War Z." The trailer is pretty generic, attempting to cover a lot of ground in order to explain the title, and along the way any potential personality is sort of shuffled away. That's assuming there's personality to begin with.

Attendees of the Toronto International Film Festival will find out for themselves when it plays there; the rest of us will find out September 23rd. Watch the trailer below.