Some of you will remember my post from a few days ago regarding me going to see Sound of Freedom with my mother. Well, it's taken me a lot longer to write than I intended, and this is much longer than intended (as I said, I have *many* thoughts about it), but here it finally is, in full: My response to the movie now that I've seen it.

First of all, some housekeeping:

  1. To remove all doubt regarding my position on this right off the bat: Child trafficking is real, it’s horrible, and it’s something that must end. This response in no way contradicts that. Indeed, I hope that it will be made clear how this movie actually hinders, rather than helps, that cause.
  2. As an alternative to this movie, I recommend the Polaris Project for a source of reliable information regarding child trafficking: Home - Polaris (polarisproject.org)
  3. This post, obviously, contains movie spoilers.

The TL;DR version is this (read below the line if you want to explore how I came to these conclusions):

  1. It’s said that this movie raises awareness about child trafficking. While this is obviously not an entirely baseless claim (after all, we’re talking about it, aren’t we?), it does not do a good job of it if you were hoping for an accurate portrayal of what child trafficking typically looks like, in that it:

a. It gives people a false sense of how to protect children from child trafficking, giving privileged classes of people the sense that “if I just don’t let my child get snatched by a stranger, they will be safe,” (the flip side being that the parents of trafficked children just didn’t supervise their kids well enough, for example), and

b. It does not give an accurate picture of how child trafficking typically occurs, does not at all discuss why it typically occurs, and sensationalizes one of the least likely trafficking scenarios (representing 10% or less of cases).

  1. This is not actually a story about trafficked children. It is the story of a man who is a hero in his own eyes. It exploits the stories of trafficked children to give Tim Ballard an ego boost (and indeed, if you want to do some background reading on him, it seems that’s his modus operandi).

  2. The movie feels like it was written thirty years ago, focusing almost exclusively on a white male protagonist, women having very few lines and little to no personality or backstory, a lot of children being used as the props for showing the white saviour protagonist’s goodness (like the World Vision commercials I used to see in the 90’s and which probably still air today) and other minorities and characters being essentially caricatures.

  3. Its box office success may be largely attributed to what I feel is a shady marketing practice, where people’s emotions are exploited, not in the typical “let’s make people feel something with this commercial” kind of way, but in a much more manipulative process where they are actually told they’ll be helping trafficked children if they buy more movie tickets so that other people can go…which is just…so many shades of wrong.

Those are just my moral objections to it. The plot is also incredibly weak in many places, which I will also go into a little bit in the main body, below.

On the pros side:

  1. The child actors were great!
  2. The main actor was not as bad as I thought he’d be!
  3. The music was stirring.
  4. The costumes and sets were good.

As you can see, superficially, it’s easy to see why so many people would like the movie for typical reasons people like movies, but the cherry on top is that they also get to feel very virtuous for having seen it.

On the neutrals/mythbusting side:

  1. It does not actually portray any QAnon conspiracies about microchipping and harvesting adrenochromes.
  2. The “Christianese-speak” moments are brief, mostly limited to single lines here and there (that’s not to say that people who have been into Evangelicalism or Mormonism won’t recognize the ever-present themes, mind you).
  3. The filming style, while not great, is mostly inoffensive.

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And now, the meat of my assessment:

The movie opens with a young girl – we later learn her name is Rocio – holding her shoes in her hands, drumming them against her bed and singing. There are multiple signals that she and her family are poor. An attractive woman comes to the door who, speaking to Rocio, reminds her that they had met earlier, when the girl had been singing outside. The girl’s father sits down with this strange, well-dressed woman named Giselle to discuss Rocio's talents. Despite being portrayed as the main antagonist (before that role is abruptly transferred to a guy who is a revolutionary force leader), Giselle, like all the other women in this movie, has very few lines, very little backstory (there are images of her as a beauty queen though), and is essentially a prop. While they're discussing a potential audition with her organization (she styles herself as a founder for this organization, though she does not address the obvious question, “why would the founder of a successful organization be in this poor village doing the door-knocking and recruiting?” and nor does the father ask) and the father is flipping through a pamphlet featuring child and youth models, the girl’s brother, Miguel, comes in the front door. Apparently, this woman sees something special in the younger child standing wide-eyed and innocent in the front door (and the effect his vulnerable appearance has on the audience is palpable) and they both go with their father to the audition the following morning.

They follow the woman’s directions to a rundown building, and the woman answers the door to one of the apartments. Pleased to see both children there, she invites them in. The father, however, is not allowed to enter with them: “No stage dads,” she says, laughing. This is probably meant to be disarming, but honestly the woman has come across very strongly as predatory the entire time – her smile is predatory, the way she talks past the dad to the kids feels predatory, her pamphlet has kids in poses that feel predatory, the building she chose to have the audition in is empty and sketchy, the way she instructs him not to pick them up until 7pm that night is sketchy – so much so that no parent would ever trust this woman if they weren’t already several levels deep into being emotionally invested in the success of this movie. I mean, they REALLY beat you over the head with the “you should not trust this woman” message. The scary part about that – and this is point “a” of my 1st objection to this movie – is that those who are already emotionally invested in the movie are also exactly the same types who would be going, “well, I knew what she was going to do from the start, so I would never have let my kids go, because I have better instincts.” It also seems to feed into the trope that moms have better parenting instincts than fathers, as they picked a single dad to fall for this very transparent scheme.

It's worth noting here, too, that though the fake audition had many kids present besides the two from the opening scenes, there were no other parents there dropping kids off, and none there at pickup either. Is the audience to believe that none of these other kids have parents looking for them? Are we to believe the other kids had already been abducted previously to stage this audition? Or were we supposed to infer that the parents were all given different times and that they adhered to them perfectly? Who can say for sure. The movie doesn’t. Instead, after the father searches frantically down the halls after 7 in a darkening building that is now completely devoid of life (and even of the sign that had previously been on the door; even the door numbers are falling off, as though the building is decaying more quickly before his eyes), we are shown the opening credits against a background of apparently real (?) security footage of various kids apparently being snatched in broad daylight, their attackers (and since we don’t have any context for the footage, we must assume that they are genuinely attackers) often grabbing them right in front of their apparent lawful caregivers.

This leads me to point b of my 1st objection to the film. It not only portrays the first stage of child trafficking to be transparent schemes, but here it suggests that the alternate way it may begin is by this kind of random snatching. The statistics simply do not bear this out, however. According to The Polaris Project these stranger kidnapping scenarios represent less than 10% of child trafficking cases. It would make one wonder why such a statistically unlikely scenario was chosen to represent child trafficking as a whole, both in the brother and sister duo’s situation and the opening credits, but honestly, we know why: Despite what so many are saying, this is not a story about human trafficking, this is not a story about how we can stop the sexual exploitation of children, nor about raising awareness about either of those things. This is a story about a man who sees himself as a saint, whose personal life is uncomplicatedly heroic, a man whose every decision is met with respect or admiration (albeit sometimes grudging respect) by coworkers, investors, cons and ex-cons alike. Where barriers exist they fall before him. Where plans must surely go wrong, they miraculously turn out alright. He faces little inner conflict, and in those rare instances where he does, the right decision is always immediately obvious.

The purported hero of this story is Tim Ballard (played by Jim Caviezel). In his opening scenes the audience learns he is a Homeland Security agent (henceforth, “cop”), who was among those completing a raid on a suspected distributor of child pornography. He doesn’t talk much, but, following a short conversation where he and a fellow cop discuss how they’ve busted a lot of pedos (their word) but rescued no children, we see him shed a single tear while he gathers evidence from the suspect’s collection of videos. This evidence gathering is, without a doubt, a very taxing, traumatizing job to complete, and I think including it in the film was a good choice. And to be even more fair, it appears the actor is trying to portray a man who is trying – and failing – to dissociate while he performs this heart-rending task, as he should. Unfortunately this acting attempt is only moderately successful. I will say that the actor was less bad than I expected from a Q-pilled guy whose claims to fame include playing Jesus in a couple bad religious films (and since I was an Evangelical once, I have seen them repeatedly), hailing Trump as a modern “Moses,” and generally making an ass of himself on social media.

This has been a trying time for Tim. He’s not only had a tough “come to Jesus” moment regarding his career while conversing with a coworker, he’s also had to face some pretty horrific evidence about the perp he just busted. Do I sound skeptical? Well, I am. And as I said, I do take seriously that gathering evidence in child sexual assault cases is a horrific, heart-rending thing to have to do. But as-presented, it appears our hero has had one heartfelt conversation with another cop, busted one bad guy too many, and that’s it. Suddenly he has all the bravery and skill he has ever needed to go pretend to be a dirty cop so that he can entrap a pedophile and save a bunch of kids. Besides how poor a legal strategy that is if what you want is to put pedophiles away and keep kids safe (since such bald-faced entrapment would be manna for any half-decent defense attorney), he’s barely showing any cracks. I suppose an Evangelical or Mormon might say that he’s been convicted by the Holy Spirit to “go save those kids,” as his wife (whose voice is, notably, not given much airtime or importance in the film. Contrast this, for example, with a movie like “Apollo 13,” which managed to make Marilyn Lovell a very impactful character, despite there being a very robust and complex story for them to tell otherwise, while she struggled with Jim Lovell’s departure and uncertain future) will later say. Are we to believe that he’s so stone cold that he has not been traumatized by watching these horrific acts prior to this moment? Or that the hero within was just waiting to burst forth, while most other cops in his position simply ignore the call? Whatever it might be, the change is dramatic. One minute he’s a good cop on a raid, the next, a supposedly dirty cop skilled in the art of tricking a purveyor of child pornography (one prolific enough to attract the feds’ attention) to lure him into a damning situation and also nail the man he acquires his images from.

It is then, at the completion of this entrapment scheme, that Tim meets Miguel, who was going to be sold to Tim “for a whole weekend” while he was playing dirty cop to entrap the pedophile. Miguel is saved, taken to a hospital for assessment (where the only other woman with lines in the movie confirms the audience’s worst fears about what’s been done to Miguel already), and then for some reason released to Tim’s custody long enough to go out for a burger, just the two of them, at night. I can’t imagine how a child who has gone through what Miguel has just gone through would not be too traumatized to be much more clammed up around a strange man like Tim, or why the hospital would let this guy who isn’t his guardian take an assaulted and abducted child out of their sight, but that’s not given any importance here. Instead, Miguel opens up immediately when Tim, apparently fluent in Spanish until later in the movie, introduces himself (AFTER they’ve gone out to the diner, mind you), as “Timoteo.”

“Timoteo?” the child asks, wide-eyed.

“Yes, that’s my name in Spanish, isn’t it?” Tim responds in Spanish (I don’t speak Spanish myself, so I won’t try to write out the dialogue as spoken, I’m just going from subtitles.)

Miguel removes a chain from his neck, and on it hangs a Catholic Saint pendant. “Timoteo” it reads on the back. There it is. He is now a saint to this child (is he the patron saint of stomach ailments, like the real Saint Timothy? I guess not), and immediately trusted. Miguel begs him to go save his sister, Rocio, who gave him the necklace. And what saintly hero wouldn’t? While he leaves his wife (with the apparent full trust, blessing, quietude, uncomplicated and unwavering confidence of a saintly Mormon wife) and many children at home, he takes off to continue his adventures. In fairness, he does, in a very short scene ask his wife to think about one of their own children’s beds being empty before he goes. There is no further conflict in this hero’s mind. Will the family be ok while he’s gone? Will his marriage survive long distance? Will he die and leave his own kids fatherless? None of these questions seem to give him much trouble. The mission is all-important. The mission is so important that he IS willing to get into a head-to head conflict with his boss about it, though. The two men spend quite a lot more time talking it over. Tim prevails, though, and off to Colombia he goes. (One minor annoyance I have here is that even supposed locals consistently pronounce it “ColUMbia” rather than “ColOMbia,” the way my MIL, who grew up there, does. Weird.)

In Colombia he is introduced to a man called “Vampiro,” a former Cartel man who it is now said (melodramatically), “buys children…and sets them free.” Vampiro is a bit skeptical at first, but once Tim says (also melodramatically) that “God’s children are not for sale” (because apparently they need to be “God’s children,” not just “children,” they need to be owned by *somebody* for them to matter), he softens and agrees to help him create an Even Bigger Entrapment Scheme to save the children from Giselle. I won’t get into that much, because this is already very long, but what it involves is them creating a “sex club” with the help of a wealthy, handsome young man that has worked with the US LEOs in the past. The funding for this project is precarious, which creates probably the only REAL conflict our hero faces in the entire movie, but of course, he prevails in this situation as well, and creates his island pedo club without further ado. Bada bing, bada boom, Giselle, an uber-pedo and his merry band of caricature-like henchmen, and the rest of the criminal lot get arrested, the kids set free. There’s just one problem! Rocio is not among them. There’s a lovely moment here, where all the kids that were rescued get to enjoy this little island paradise instead of getting raped, and it is, for the audience, a happy island of respite from a movie that’s mostly relied on repeatedly making the audience wonder whether it’s about to actually show a kid getting raped for dramatic tension. It’s here that we see the moment in all the ads, the moment that we get the movie’s title from: “Hear that? That’s the sound of freedom,” says Vampiro, listening to the kids clapping and singing. This could have been a much stronger thing, and this is one of my criticisms of the direction. I suppose, if they’d actually had to feature the kids more, they would have had to examine just how, exactly, Tim is the real hero here. To have made this theme stronger – the sound of freedom being the children’s happy voices – would have had Tim share the spotlight with healthcare practitioners and social workers, with women and the children themselves. It would have required that the movie spend far more time on the drama involved in caring for these traumatized kids and their recovery. But, as I said, that’s not what this movie is really about. And as such, “the sound of freedom” falls flat as a theme. You see it in only three places: Once, at the very beginning when Rocio is playing and singing, once here, and once at the end, when Rocio, rescued from revolutionaries (and the one who has bought her is apparently killed by Tim, though it is not super clear whether he’s just unconscious or whether Tim is at all troubled about potentially having killed a man…which, in fairness, does fit with his whole vigilante justice thing), is playing a new drum that her father has placed on her bed. This, too, could have been better emphasized. The father is a character one wants to learn more about, but his screen time is very limited. Rocio is seen a few times in the movie singing brokenly as she copes with the trauma of being trafficked, but the scenes are very brief in the context of Tim’s hero story, so their impact on the movie’s overall theme is also, sadly, limited.

As a whole, this movie could have done a lot more to bring real awareness to child trafficking and its realities. Unfortunately, because the main point is actually that Tim is a saint (and we see this again, near the end of the movie, where Tim is shown with a beatific smile and then it zooms in on the St. Timoteo pendant, now returned to Rocio) and a hero, we see a very tiny tip of the iceberg regarding the conditions that actually lead to child trafficking. Wealth inequality may be inferred, but if you’re not already aware of that as an issue you probably wouldn’t pick up on it. There is no mention of LGBTQ2+ kids kicked out of their homes and forced into situations where they may be exploited. There’s no mention of abusive family members and intergenerational trauma leading to kids being sold by people close to them. There’s nothing about international or internal conflict, refugee camps, or any other preexisting socioeconomic factors or how the international community might address them to prevent this from happening in the future. There is absolutely nothing about the ways that international adoption agencies have taken children from loving but poor parents and sold them to wealthier families, and nothing about the fact that sexual exploitation is just one (most obvious and disgusting) aspect of child trafficking. There’s just hero Tim, breaking the law to get the bad guys and set kids free (to what fate beyond the climactic moments of triumph is unclear). In fact, Tim comes on while the credits roll to deliver a special message. In sermon-like tones, he thanks the audience, and tells them what a good thing they’ve done by showing up to see the movie in-theatre. He gives an emotional appeal to the audience to take out their phones right now, and follow the QR code displayed on-screen to a website where they can “pay it forward” and help in the fight against child trafficking by raising awareness. How does he mean they should do that? Well by pre-paying for other’s movie tickets of course! This is the movie to watch to raise awareness! Don’t go anywhere else! Forget the organizations doing the long term work, who needs that when you have this movie? In fact you must have people see it in-theatre. It’s not about box office sales, perish the thought! It’s about the fact that sitting in the theatre is an experience you can’t get at home. There are no interruptions, you can’t leave, we love a captive audience! And we’ll show them this same message at the end when they see it, too, so that once they’ve seen the vulnerable faces of these children they can’t help but want to help and will buy even more tickets for other people! THIS MOVIE BRINGS AWARENESS TO CHILD TRAFFICKING, INDIVIDUAL RESULTS MAY VARY, BATTERIES ARE NOT INCLUDED. Now go home and feel better about yourself for having helped the children. Great job everybody!

Overall: The movie is not good at doing the thing it claims to do, should have been much better as a movie even with a moderate talent like Caviezel (thanks to it having an actually very good selection of talent among the rest of the cast), but failed in its direction and sucks in its uncritical approach to social issues.