I think of myself as a reasonably tough guy, allowing for advancing age and decreasing height. I’ve risked my neck a couple of times rescuing women — one from a purse robber, another from a violent boyfriend. But I’ve never shown the kind of courage invoked by the lyrics of an old Broadway song (Impossible Dream from Man of La Mancha): “to be willing to march into hell on a heavenly cause.”
Tim Ballard has, as a former Department of Homeland Security agent turned anti-child-trafficking crusader. The grim yet uplifting, and frequently thrilling, new film, Sound of Freedom, depicts Ballard’s mission to save children from international enslavement while displaying an artistry and fearlessness long absent in Hollywood.
Some of the artistry can be seen in the casting of superb, charismatic actor Jim Caviezel as Ballard. Other than the lead in an initially great show ruined by wokeness last decade, Person of Interest, Caviezel has been off the Hollywood A-list since he played Jesus in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ and doubled down as an outspoken Christian. But few men on that list can strike the sublime balance of masculinity, sensitivity, and cool Caviezel brings to the part. When he utters the movie’s unofficial tagline, “God’s children are not for sale,” it is as impactful as his similar predecessor, Clint Eastwood’s “Go ahead, make my day,” only more Christlike, given Ballard’s mission to pull children out of Hell on Earth.
Director and co-writer Alejandro Monteverde gives Caviezel the perfect vehicle to shine. His cinematically rich execution of Ballard’s crusade recalls John Ford’s masterpiece, The Searchers. Monteverde navigates a Hitchcockian course between suspense and horror, knowing precisely how much human depravity to show or to insinuate.
In one scene, an adult leads a little slave boy into his bedroom. Monteverde cuts to an external view as the man closes the curtain, leaving the audience with the most nightmarish image possible — from our own imagination. He opens the film with a leisurely paced sequence in which a poor single father in Honduras leaves his daughter at a juvenile talent call, expecting to pick her up later. The audience already knows what the dad has to find out and suffer through — that the whole thing is a kidnapping operation.
The non-famous supporting cast — other than Mira Sorvino as Ballard’s wife, Katherine — provides exemplary backup. Bill Camp stands out playing Vampiro, an ex-Colombian drug lord redeemed by a traumatic experience with an underage prostitute. And the impressive group of Latino actors well represents the majority Central–South American settings. They’re ably led by José Zúñiga as the distraught dad (sharing his last name, Aguilar, added to my empathy for the character).
Cuban starlet Yessica Borroto is memorably chilling as the beautiful kidnapper, Giselle. Director Monteverde understands what Hollywoke elite such as Disney choose to ignore, even though child traffickers do not — that young girls are drawn to feminine beauty in an inspirational or corruptible way. In a sublime combination of direction and acting, Monteverde lingers on Borroto’s face at the end of a disturbing scene, very subtly suggesting Giselle’s possible remorse for her evil. (READ MORE: Disney’s Ghost Haunts Woke Disney)
Of course, much hinges on the child actors pulling off their descent into the underworld, and Lucas Avila and Cristal Aparicio are heartbreakingly wonderful as brother and sister. When Ballard removes Avila’s character from the degenerate abusing him, he asks the boy his name. “Me llamo Teddy Bear,” Avila answers, viscerally evoking the full depravity of his ordeal.
His rescue of the boy leads Ballard to obsess over finding his sister, which causes him to quit his job when recalled home. The trail takes him on a lone Joseph Conrad–like odyssey into the Heart of Darkness in the Colombian jungle, where life has no value. Caviezel sells the entire journey.
The makers of Sound of Freedom were fearless because they not only rejected the demands of Hollywoke but went against the entire leftist mindset. Case in point, Bill Camp, who nails the part of reformed Colombian narcotraficante Vampiro, is not remotely Latino. Consequently, he won’t be nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar next year, even though he deserves to be — for his riveting performance, not his ethnicity.
Furthermore, by showcasing how the dregs of Latin America advance the scourge of child-trafficking in the United States, Sound of Freedom offers a brutal condemnation of Biden’s open-border disaster and the media’s desperate attempt to hide it. In fact, Disney buried the 2018 film when it bought the original intended distributor, 20th Century Fox (now 20th Century Studios). Possibly, a story about child grooming with racial overtones discomforted Disney executives.
As several of us culture war correspondents have been writing for years, Hollywood’s market loss — due to liberal intransigence — is the audience’s gain. The low-budget Sound of Freedom made well over $40 million in its first week, outgrossing Disney’s expensive franchise killer, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, on July 4. This success has driven the progressive media even loonier than normal.
“Following that money leads back to a more unsavory network of astroturfed boosterism among the far-right fringe,” declared the Guardian. Rolling Stone lamented, “To know thousands of adults will absorb Sound of Freedom, this vigilante fever dream, and come away thinking themselves better informed on a hidden civilizational crisis … well, it’s profoundly depressing.”
As for me, I had tears in my eyes for the whole length of the movie. I guess I’m not as tough as I thought.
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