Sound of Freedom (film)

Sound of Freedom
File:The Sound of Freedom Poster.jpg Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Alejandro Monteverde
Written by	Rod Barr Alejandro Monteverde
Produced by	Eduardo Verastegui
Starring	Jim Caviezel Mira Sorvino Bill Camp
Cinematography	Gorka Gómez Andreu Aec
Edited by	Brian Scofield
Music by	Javier Navarrete
Production company	Santa Fe Films
Distributed by	Angel Studios
Release date	July 4, 2023 (2023-07-04)
Running time	131 minutes
Country	United States
Languages	English Spanish
Budget	$14.5 million
Box office	$27.3 million

Sound of Freedom is a 2023 American action film directed and co-written by Alejandro Monteverde, and stars Jim Caviezel, Mira Sorvino, and Bill Camp. Caviezel plays Tim Ballard, a former government agent who embarks on a mission to rescue children from sex traffickers in Colombia. It is produced by Eduardo Verastegui, who also plays a role in the film.

The film was released on July 4, 2023, by Angel Studios. It received generally positive reviews from critics and audiences, and was a surprise box office success.

Plot

In Honduras, Roberto, a poor father of two, is approached by a former beauty queen, Gisselle. Gisselle offers to sign his young children, Miguel and Rocio, to child modeling contracts. He accepts and takes them to the photoshoot. However, when he returns to pick his children up, they are gone. It is revealed that the children were sold to be used as sex slaves.

In the United States, Tim Ballard is a Special Agent for the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), where he investigates child pornography and arrests people who possess and distribute it. The painful work takes a great toll on his personal life, and this is only worsened another agent, Chris, points out that they have arrested many child predators, but have failed to save even a single child from being exploited. Tim speaks to a predator he arrested, Ernst Oshinsky, and pretends to be a pedophile himself. Once he gains Ohinsky's trust, he sets up a meeting with a trafficked child, and is able to arrest the man who purchased the boy, Earl Buchanan.

Tim rescues the boy, who says his name is Miguel. Tim befriends the child and asks him for information, hoping to find the other children. Tim learns that Miguel's sister is still missing, and the boy asks him to save her. Tim arranges for Roberto to get his son back, and Roberto breaks down because his daughter is still missing. Miguel and Roberto go back to Honduras, but not before Miguel gives Tim his sister's Saint Timothy necklace. Tim starts looking for Rocio, and his search leads him to Cartagena, Colombia. He meets with former Cartel accountant, Vampiro, who now works to save children from sex trafficking. Vampiro tells him who Gisselle and her associates are.

After reading about a child sex club in Thailand that was closed by authorities, Tim decides that this is the perfect cover story to acquire a large number of children, including Rocio, and set them free in a sting operation. Tim gets help from a Colombian police officer, Jorge, and a wealthy citizen named Paul. Tim's supervisor in the HSI, Frost, is unable to provide funding for the operation, and asks him to return. Tim, unwilling to abandon the search for Rocio, resigns. However, Frost is eventually able to convince the Colombian U.S. Embassy to assist with Tim's rescue operation. Undercover, they convince Gisselle to sell them 54 children, successfully arrest all of the conspirators and free the children. However, Rocio is not with them.

After interrogating one of Gisselle's associates, Jorge learns that Rocio was sold as a slave to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, entrenched deep in the Amazon natural region behind enemy territory. Jorge informs Tim that there is no way to retrieve the girl, because the region is largely unmapped jungle wilderness, and any rebel territory is a no-fly zone for the Colombian government. However, Vampiro suggests that doctors can get into the region for medical purposes, which gives Tim the idea to pose as doctors. Jorge reluctantly agrees to the risky operation. Tim and Vampiro attempt to enter enemy territory in disguise, but the rebels refuse to let both of them enter, leaving Tim to complete the mission alone.

Tim successfully gains access to the enemy camp where Rocio is being held. He learns that she is being used as the personal sex slave for the rebel leader, El Alacrán ("the scorpion"), and is also being forced to mash coca leaves to produce cocaine to fund the rebel war against the Colombian government. Tim manages to save Rocio, but is forced to kill El Alacrán in the process. Despite being shot at by the rebels, Tim narrowly manages to save Rocio and gives her the necklace Miguel gave him earlier. Rocio is finally returned her to her father and brother, and the family returns to Honduras.

An epilogue reveals that Tim Ballard testified before the United States Congress and his testimony resulted in laws being passed that require the government to cooperate with foreign countries on sex trafficking investigations. The epilogue also states that there are more people enslaved today than in any other time in history, including when slavery was legal.

Cast

• Jim Caviezel as Tim Ballard
• Mira Sorvino as Katherine Ballard
• Bill Camp as Vampiro
• Eduardo Verástegui as Paul
• Javier Godino as Jorge
• José Zúñiga as Roberto
• Kurt Fuller as Frost
• Gary Basaraba as Earl Buchanan
• Gerardo Taracena as El Alacrán
• Scott Haze as Chris
• Gustavo Sánchez Parra as El Calacas
• Kris Avedisian as Ernst Ohinsky

Production

Development

Sound of Freedom was inspired by the work of Tim Ballard, the founder of Operation Underground Railroad, or O.U.R.), an anti-trafficking activist. Work on the script began in 2015.

Ballard personally requested that Jim Caviezel portray him because he was affected by Caviezel's role in The Count of Monte Cristo (2002). Caviezel has stated that Sound of Freedom was the second most important film he has ever done, ranking behind his role as Jesus Christ in The Passion of the Christ (2004).

The film's score is composed by Javier Navarrete.

Filming

Principal photography began in the summer of 2018. The majority of the film was shot in Cartagena, Colombia.

Additional scenes were shot in Calexico, California, including at the booth where Ballard worked as a DHS agent at the Calexico Port of Entry.

Distribution

The film was completed in 2018 and a distribution deal was made with 20th Century Fox. However, that studio was purchased by the Walt Disney Company, which shelved the film. The filmmakers reportedly spent years trying to get the distribution rights back from Disney and take it to theaters.

Verástegui approached Angel Studios with the release rights. Angel presented the film to an online group of 100,000 investors in its past projects called the Angel Guild, which gave it a "yes" vote within days. In March 2023, Variety reported that Angel Studios had acquired the worldwide distribution rights, with a planned release during the second half of 2023. Angel later set a release date of July 4, 2023.

Angel used equity crowdfunding to raise the funds needed to distribute and market the film. 7,000 people invested, allowing Angel to meet its $5 million goal in two weeks. They also encouraged patrons to "pay it forward" to allow people who might not otherwise see the movie to watch it in theaters for free. Goya Cares, an anti-human trafficking foundation established by Goya Foods, announced its support as executive producer for the release. Actor and director Mel Gibson endorsed the film in a video.

Controversies

Accuracy

While the film is purportedly based on real events involving Ballard's O.U.R., the accounts of those events have been questioned by researchers and reporters. In a 2020 expose, Vice News says that Ballard embellished O.U.R.'s role in the rescue of a trafficked woman. A 2021 follow-up article further criticized O.U.R.'s practices, including using inexperienced donors and celebrities as part of its jump team, a lack of meaningful surveillance or identification of targets, failing to validate whether the people they intended to rescue were in fact actual trafficking victims, and conflating consensual sex work with sex trafficking. A 2021 article in Slate criticized a 2014 raid conducted by O.U.R. in the Dominican Republic, saying that it was likely to have traumatized the trafficked children. Anne Gallagher, an authority on human trafficking, wrote in 2015 that O.U.R. had an "alarming lack of understanding about how sophisticated criminal trafficking networks must be approached and dismantled" and called the work of O.U.R "arrogant, unethical and illegal".

Investigative journalists Lynn Packer and Damion Moore of American Crime Journal reported that Tim Ballard lied about his involvement in the case portrayed in the film and fabricated details about his child sex trafficking activities.

ScreenRant did an article on the film and confirmed that much of the film's story was accurate, with minor inaccuracies largely occurring as a result of runtime.

QAnon

Both Ballard and star Caviezel subscribe to several conspiracy theories of the QAnon movement. Caviezel spoke at two QAnon conventions in 2021, endorsing the belief that child traffickers drain children’s blood to obtain adrenochrome.

Release

The film was released in 2,600 theaters on July 4, 2023.

Reception

Box office

On July 3, 2023, Deadline Hollywood reported that the film sold $10 million in ticket pre-sales across 2,626 theaters, ahead of its domestic opening on July 4, 2023. Originally, the film was projected to gross $11–15 million over its first week of release, with some estimates reaching $20 million. The film grossed $14.2 million on its first day of release, $3.6 million on its second, and $3.5 million on its third, for a Tuesday—Thursday total of $21.3 million, raising six-day estimates to $36 million.

Critical response

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 75% based on 20 reviews, with an average rating of 6.6/10. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 60 out of 100, based on four critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audience polled by CinemaScore gave the film a rare "A+" grade.

Variety's Owen Gleiberman gave the film a positive review, writing, "Let's assume that, like me, you’re not a right-wing fundamentalist conspiracy theorist looking for a dark, faith-based suspense film to see over the holiday weekend. (The movie opens July 3.) Even then, you needn't hold extreme beliefs to experience Sound of Freedom as a compelling movie that shines an authentic light on one of the crucial criminal horrors of our time, one that Hollywood has mostly shied away from."

Jackie K. Cooper called the film "an intense look at the scourge of child sex trafficking" and said it "holds your interest but difficult to watch."

Conversely, Rolling Stone's Miles Klee gave a more critical review, writing, "[Sound of Freedom] is a stomach-turning experience, fetishizing the torture of its child victims and lingering over lush preludes to their sexual abuse. At times I had the uncomfortable sense that I might be arrested myself just for sitting through it... To know thousands of adults will absorb... this vigilante fever dream, and come away thinking themselves better informed on a hidden civilizational crisis… well, it’s profoundly depressing. Worse still, they’ll want to spread the word."

RogerEbert.com's Nick Allen was also negative: "“Sound of Freedom” is a solemn, drawn-out bore with a not particularly bold narrative stance—caring about the safety of children is roughly the easiest cause for any remotely decent human being... But while being so committed to such solemnity and suffering, the truncated storytelling by co-writers Monteverde and Rod Barr neglects to flesh out its ideas or characters or add any more intensity to Ballard’s slow-slow-slow burn search for two kids in particular (Lucás Ávila’s Miguel and Cristal Aparicio’s Rocío) whose faces haunt him."

External links

• Sound of Freedom on Angel Studios
• Sound of Freedom at IMDb
• Sound of Freedom at Metacritic
• Sound of Freedom at Rotten Tomatoes