Stream It Or Skip It

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Sound of Freedom’ on Prime Video, the Child-Trafficking Movie That Became a Culture War Flashpoint And Box Office Sensation

By John Serba
Published Dec. 27, 2023, 3:55 p.m. ET

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Sound of Freedom is finally streaming on Amazon Prime Video after arriving on VOD in early November 2023. That’s the least interesting part of the story surrounding this lightly faith-based movie, which became a flashpoint in the political culture war for many reasons, the primary one being star Jim Caviezel, a proponent of Qanon conspiracy theories that correlate with the film’s depiction of a child-trafficking sting operation started by Tim Ballard, a real-life ex-fed who started anti-trafficking organization Operation Underground Railroad. Bolstered by support from the MAGA crowd and a pay-it-forward marketing campaign, the movie raked in $242 million during its theatrical release, making it one of the most successful independent films ever (and gave it bragging rights for beating new Indiana Jones and Mission: Impossible movies at the box office). Now more people will see Sound of Freedom with some fresh context, as Ballard recently was booted from OUR amidst sexual misconduct and grooming allegations. The question here is whether the movie functions within and outside of all this metatext and subtext.

SOUND OF FREEDOM: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: A young Honduran girl, Rocio (Cristal Aparicio) sits on her bed, singing and drumming her sandals on the bottom of a bureau drawer. She’s got a nice voice, and that’s their in – her father (Jose Zuñiga) is approached by a would-be talent scout (Yessica Borroto) who entices him to bring Rocio and her younger brother Miguel (Lucas Avila) for an audition. We’ve already got that sinking feeling, and it’s affirmed when dad is pushed out of the room and asked to return later, and when he does, his son and daughter and all the other kids are gone without a trace. He panics. He yells. He bangs on doors. It’s every parent’s worst nightmare.

We, however, see Miguel again soon – in a photograph being ogled by a creep (Kris Avedisian) who’s uploading kiddie porn onto the internet. Just then, the cops bust in the door and tackle him. The head of the sting is Tim Ballard (Caviezel), who works for the Dept. of Homeland Security, and has to watch confiscated child-porn videos and file reports. Tough gig. A fellow agent laments the trauma he’s endured on the job: “I’ve been to a lot of murder scenes, but this shit’s different,” he says. Tim and his cohorts have busted 288 pedophiles, but they’ve saved no kids. Zero. So Tim pulls on a thread. Pretends to be a pedophile. Follows a lead to the U.S.-Mexico border. Busts a sicko as he tries to cross. In his backseat? Miguel.

Tim reunites Miguel with his father, and learns that their family isn’t complete. Rocio is still god knows where. Tim talks his boss (Kurt Fuller) into letting him follow a lead overseas – despite the fact that Tim’s an American agent at an American agency who wants to rescue a Honduran kid in Colombia. He kisses his wife (Mira Sorvino) and their legion of children goodbye and flies to Cartagena, where he amasses a crew including former cartel guy Vampiro (Bill Camp), local cop Jorge (Javier Gordino) and rich benefactor Paulo (Eduardo Verastegui). They put together a sex-club facade to lure in traffickers, and make a deal to purchase 50 child sex slaves, and at this point, Tim’s boss says it’s time to come back to the States. Tim calls his wife, and the decision here is obvious: “You quit your job and you go and rescue those kids,” she says.

Jim Caviezel in 'Sound of Freedom'
Photo: Amazon Prime Video / Courtesy Everett Collection

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Taken and The Whistleblower come to mind, with the Faith Lite ethic of movies like Jesus Revolution and American Underdog.

Performance Worth Watching: Camp’s character is the only one who has any sort of dynamic – Caviezel goes full-on intense for a flat, wooden performance – and he makes the most of it, playing his bad-guy-turned-hero fast and loose, with splashes of color.

Memorable Dialogue: This pretty much encapsulates the tone, vibe and intent of this movie:

Vampire: Hear that? That’s the sound of freedom.

Tim: Amen.

Sex and Skin: None.

Sound of Freedom
Photos: Getty Images, Everett Collection

Our Take: Here’s a nothing-exists-in-a-vacuum take: Sound of Freedom isn’t a political movie at all, really. It just bears some of the weight of Caviezel’s idiotic Qanon baggage, which, if you aren’t aware, insists that the world is run by a secret cabal of Satanic child-sex-traffickers. In fact, the film’s villains aren’t drinking the blood of children and pushing pro-abortion legislation, but rather, they’re run-of-the-mill stereotypes who are in it for the money and/or to satiate their grotesque desires. The film’s status as a culture-war flashpoint simply played on the flimsy notion that morally righteous people will support and evangelize for a movie that condemns child trafficking, even if it’s just any old movie that condemns child trafficking, which Sound of Freedom most certainly is – and it’s worth noting that distributor Angel Studios capitalized quite nicely on this metatextual dynamic.

And here’s the vacuum take: Sound of Freedom isn’t a political movie at all, really. It’s excruciatingly earnest, a bit long-winded, tonally stiff, well-intentioned and directed with a modicum of visual panache. Director Alejandro Monteverde stages difficult-to-watch scenes of child grooming and exploitation as if he isn’t quite sure how to handle them, and they’ll make you queasy for reasons both right (we should be uncomfortable when confronted with this subject matter) and wrong (how did the filmmakers explain the content of scenes to child actors?). The film is unflinchingly on-the-nose, for better or worse, depicting Ballard as uncomplicated as the sleazy-slimy villains, who make John Rambo’s antagonists look like field mice. And yet, for a film about a man engaging in precarious subterfuge among deep-jungle guerilla traffickers, it’s weirdly boring, its tension and intensity diluted by cornball overtures (see “memorable dialogue” above), a tendency to blandly reiterate obvious emotional content (selling children for sex is bad, and it happens in real life, and you should be sad and angry about that) and Caviezel’s long, slow, brooding stares (especially the ones where he bears down and forces out some tears). On the whole, this is a functional movie, but it inspires no greater superlative than that.

Our Call: Caviezel gets a whole spiel here where he goes on about how this subject matter is “too ugly for polite conversation,” and that’s Sound of Freedom’s thesis statement: People need to do something about child sex trafficking – and it insists this is revelatory, and not a blatantly obvious statement that billions of people would never disagree with. So I’ll go wishy-washy here: STREAM IT if you need that assertion reiterated. SKIP IT if you’re already pretty firm on your anti-trafficking stance.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.