Review of “Sound of Freedom”
Child trafficking doesn’t quite fit the bill for most family entertainment; and quite frankly, I prefer movies that tend to be uplifting. So, I really wasn’t motivated to watch this movie; however, since Jim Caviezel was the star, and Angel Studios produced it, I was anxious to check it out. It’s based on a true story, and I discovered this movie had a realistic feel to it, rather than being a documentary…. and to me that made it much more watchable, since I am not a big fan of documentaries (yes, I know..I should be).
Although riveting, it is also sad and yet has an ending that is heartwarming. Alas, if all reports are even half-true, millions (and we mean many millions) of children are sex slaves to traffickers, and few of them are likely to have happy endings.
Those in the U.S. have watched an estimated 500,000 undocumented aliens stream across the Southern border each year and we have to wonder….how many of these are child traffickers? The same can be said for some European countries.
Well..back to the review of “Sound of Freedom”:
Casting was great…not just Jim Caviezel, as well as the supporting cast….including the children. Cinematography was also great. It was thought-provoking….you can’t help wonder how many children are exploited annually….and what finally becomes of them? Of course the movie doesn’t tell us that.
Note: the movie was made in 2018. It is arguably even truer today than then. The production company initially had a distribution deal with 20th Century Fox. However, after the Walt Disney Company acquired 20th Century Fox, Sound of Freedom was shelved. The film’s producer, Eduardo Verastegui, spent more than a year getting rights for the movie from Disney. Unfortunately, as soon as Disney released the rights for the film, the COVID pandemic hit and prevented the producer from getting it released.
The real-life Tim Ballard, the DHS agent played by Caviezel, has testified at a House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee and shared footage of the sting operation portrayed in Sound of Freedom with the media. CBS applauded Tim Ballard and “Sound of Freedom” in 2014 for their efforts against child trafficking. Yet, today, the same mainstream media is dismissing the film based on Ballard’s work as a “paranoid” QAnon conspiracy. Why the sudden shift?
Spoiler Alert: Watch for it! Some actual footage of the sting operation plays during the final moments of the movie (or was it during the credits?) …but you’ll have to be looking for it…it flashes by quickly, with some of the faces blurred out in the images. By the time Tim left Colombia, he and the team had rescued over 120 victims and arrested more than a dozen traffickers,” reads text on the screen. I found that part fascinating.
The haters are coming out of the woodwork to bash the movie, of course. Some individuals on social media like to point out the clerical abuse scandal in the Catholic church (or other denominations), some want to say we are conspiracy theorists (isn’t it amazing how many “conspiracies” seem to come true once facts are exposed?) and others just don’t want to hear the truth.
The mere mention of God (“God’s children are not for sale”) is enough to rile up the “sophisticated” writers of such newspapers as The New York Times (which have long since lost any semblance of their motto “All the news that’s fit to Print”, much less any investigative reporting). Likewise, magazines such as Rolling Stone were happy to call it red meat for Q-Anon conspiracy theorists. Nowhere in the movie do we see anything to back that up, but of course no proof is ever offered in these critiques.
Most telling is the fact that, unwilling..or unable, to attack the movie itself, much of the criticism is that of the actors’ political and religious beliefs rather than the movie itself….something that never seems to concern them when reviewing other movies.
I would like to ask these critics: “ I’m just wonderin’… do you even remember when you first sold out?” ( a quote from the movie “Rainmaker”). When did you decide that your political message was more important than the truth?” Well, that would not go over well, I am sure.
To sum it up…..”The Sound of Freedom” is a great movie with a powerful message. Go see it….free tickets are available from Angel Studios supporters…or you can purchase tickets for someone else.
