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“‘Sound of Freedom,’ a religious thriller led by ‘The Passion of the Christ’ star Jim Caviezel, is becoming an unlikely box office savior. The faith-based movie about child sex trafficking has collected an impressive $40 million after six days of release… Alejandro Monteverde wrote and directed ‘Sound of Freedom,’ based on the true story of Tim Ballard (Caviezel), a former government agent who embarks on a mission to rescue children from sex traffickers in Colombia…
“Religious and conservative media groups have rallied behind the film, which is partially crowdfunded… [The movie] has also stirred up some controversy, with detractors accusing the film of embellishing the reality of child exploitation and stoking QAnon conspiracy theories.” Variety
The right praises the movie, arguing that it highlights the serious problem of child sex trafficking.
“It’s difficult to obtain reliable figures for the number of victims of child sex trafficking. But whether the figures are in the hundreds or thousands in any country, there’s no doubt that it’s real. According to a 2019 New York Times article, technology companies reported a record of 45 million online photos and videos of child sexual abuse in the previous year. The United Nations’ 2020 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons noted that one in every three victims of human trafficking is a child…
“[The postscript reminds] audiences that ‘there are more humans trapped in slavery today than at any point in history — including when slavery was legal.’ And yet, most of the slavery that exercises people today is historic.”
Madeleine Kearns, National Review
“Although Sound of Freedom was completed half a decade ago, the film has only been released this Fourth of July. Netflix and Amazon passed on the thriller, and 21st Century Fox and Disney both reneged on distribution deals. Instead, it's the conservative, crowdfunded Angel Studios that has ultimately brought the movie to the big screen…
“[Yet] Whatever QAnon flirtations Ballard and Caviezel may or may not have engaged in, no semblance of conspiracy theory has made it into the final cut of Sound of Freedom. If anything, it's a film that, in the #MeToo heyday, would have been feted as a masterclass of the genre. If there is any correct and ethical way to illustrate something as traumatic as systemic child rape on film, Sound of Freedom is it. Perhaps if left-leaning viewers ignore the greater culture war and focus on the actual one — criminal cartels trafficking immigrant children of color — they will find much that resonates.”
Tiana Lowe Doescher, Washington Examiner
“The lesson of Sound of Freedom isn’t that there’s some secret QAnon plot that has made it a success. It’s that people tend to like more traditional, morally straightforward narratives in movies. That’s not a commentary on religion in films, but rather that a stark presentation of right and wrong tends to make people feel good and want to watch… Besides, if we are going to start panning movies because of who the actors are and what their beliefs are in the real world, there will be basically nothing left to watch. Hollywood is full of really odd people.”
Bonchie, RedState
The left criticizes the movie, noting that several individuals involved with it have embraced conspiracy theories.
The left criticizes the movie, noting that several individuals involved with it have embraced conspiracy theories.
“The pedophiles and child traffickers in Sound of Freedom are sweaty, sharp-toothed deviants, as they’ve been depicted in movies as far back as Fritz Lang’s M nearly a century ago. But the movie darkly hints that there are more well-connected and outwardly respectable variants out there, willing to pay six figures and up for what Caviezel’s character, who poses as a businessman trying to set up a high-end members-only club for child rapists, calls ‘a little pedo action.’…
“Caviezel has been enthusiastically using his press tour to profess his belief in an international black market where a barrel of children’s body parts goes for a thousand times the price of oil. Ballard himself has circulated wild and unsupported figures about the extent of the sex-trafficking industry.”
Sam Adams, Slate
“Ballard and the actor who plays him, Caviezel, have both expressed support for some of the QAnon’s movement’s wildest claims. Ballard once entertained a viral theory that claimed the online furniture retailer Wayfair was selling children, sometimes packing them into overpriced storage cabinets. ‘Law enforcement’s going to flush that out and we’ll get our answers sooner than later,’ he said in a July 2020 Twitter video. ‘But I want to tell you this: children are sold that way.’ There is no evidence to support the theory, which has inspired threats against employees and impeded actual child trafficking investigations.”
Herb Scribner and Will Sommer, Washington Post
“It will surely do no good to point out Sound of Freedom‘s hackneyed white savior narrative. Or its wildly immature assumption that abused and traumatized children go right back to normal once the bad guys are in handcuffs. Or that it enforces stereotypes about trafficking that Angel Studios itself says are less than accurate. To the film’s intended viewers, these cannot be flaws — they’re the whole appeal…
“There is visible suffering all around us in America. There are poor and unhoused, and people brutalized or killed by police. There are mass shootings, lack of healthcare, climate disasters. And yet, over and over, the far right turns to these sordid fantasies about godless monsters hurting children. Now, as in the 1980s Satanic panic, they won’t even face the fact that most kids who suffer sexual abuse are harmed not by a shadowy cabal of strangers, but at the hands of a family member.”
Miles Klee, Rolling Stone
