Film Review: Sound of Freedom (2023)
Indy Upset or Self-righteous Posturing?
In a Nutshell
This video, while somewhat dated, is a good breakdown of the common pitfalls that Christian films fall into. However, watching that video also ignites in me a greater appreciation for faith-based films that are able to break the pattern, and become recognized as art in their own right. Films like The Prince of Egypt, Silence, and Hacksaw Ridge are successful pieces of art even before the Christian-ness of their themes is considered.
I would add Sound of Freedom to this list. Go watch it.
It’s not perfect, but it is good. Even if you go in critically, you’ll end up with the experience of watching a professionally-made movie, not the experience of being preached at by daytime-TV actors.
As a bonus: If money is a factor in whether or not you’ll see the movie, this website has been set up by the studio for people to claim free tickets at a participating theater.
Please watch the movie BEFORE continuing with this review. First: the rest of this post will contain spoilers. Second and more importantly: I will be discussing critiques and other observations which might bias your perspective of the film if you haven’t already seen it. Go watch it, then meet me back here.
Watch It
Synopsis
This film - based on the true story of Homeland Security agent, Tim Ballard - begins by showing a group of children kidnapped out of their homes by human traffickers who pretend to be modeling agents in Latin America. Miguel and Rocío (siblings both under the age of 9) are separated.
Meanwhile, Ballard is investigating a dealer of child-pornography in the United States. Through a series of interrogations and deceptions, Ballard arranges for Miguel to be transported to the United States where he is rescued and his trafficker is arrested.
When Miguel mentions that his sister Rocío is still missing, Ballard is inspired to go abroad to rescue her. Ballards government employers give him a short leash to conduct investigations in Columbia. Ballard enlists the help of Colombian law enforcement, a former money-launderer who now rescues children, and a wealthy civilian international traveler. This team develops a scheme to lure kidnappers into their grasp by posing as interested “clients.”
When Homeland Security pulls the plug on the operation, Ballard quits his job and he and the team remain in Columbia and execute the plan themselves. Several kidnappers are arrested and 54 children are rescued from captivity, but Rocío is not among them.
They learn through interrogations that Rocío is being held in a rebel-controlled area of Columbia. The team then develops a plan to pose as doctors from the United Nations and search for Rocío while pretending to administer vaccines. Ballard finds her enslaved in a rebel camp.
After some tense situations and close calls including a fist-fight with a rebel leader, Ballard narrowly escapes the region with Rocío. The movie ends by showing Miguel and Rocío both reunited with their father. A text epilogue refers to the work Ballard has continued after the events depicted. The text also states that there are more people enslaved today than at any other time in history.
Controversy
Charitably, those who seem to have a problem with this movie don’t mention anything about the content or message as problematic. I believe the use of this movie as a battlefield in a culture war is overblown for a combination of reasons:
Filming for this movie was completed nearly five years ago, but the premiers and distributions were delayed until this month for legal and administrative reasons. There seems to be solid evidence that individual studios may have been biased against this movie, but I’ve seen no evidence so far of any coordinated effort by Hollywood or the Establishment to “suppress” this film. No entertainment entity is required to buy or host material that they don’t want to. (God bless America.)
The release - and success - of this film is coinciding with the release - and failure - of films such as the Indiana Jones sequel and Elemental, which are viewed by some as representing the Hollywood establishment: big budgets, big names, and aggressive social messaging. This pattern has been referred to in the past with the phrase “Get woke, go broke.” I believe this is simply a separate issue, and that drawing conclusions from these comparisons is unhelpful, especially this soon after release.
The real Tim Ballard and star of the film, Jim Caviezel, have been linked to QAnon events and organizations. The film itself makes no mention of QAnon and very little mention of politics at all, and there is no such connection between QAnon and Angel Studios. That said, this type of boycott is a valid way for people to express their discontent with anyone they view to be too dangerous or too offensive to financially support. I’m not currently interested enough to learn anything about QAnon, and it won’t be relevant to anything said in the rest of this review.
Shortly, I find that making these types of consumer decisions about Chik-fil-A, Bud Light, MyPillow, churches, schools, and even entire states to be healthy and appropriate. However, accusing other people of being pedophiles, racists, and other slurs based on nothing more than what they buy - or don’t buy - is harmful, unproductive, and wrong.
Now…
Sound of Freedom
While I do consider this to be among the top tier of faith-based movies, I still have some nit-picks, which mostly revolve around the screenwriting.
My immersion in the film was broken repeatedly by unnatural dialogue, unrealistic pacing, and over-reliance on certain tropes. I’ll give examples.
But first, I think it would help to make some comparisons to another film: A Hidden Life (2019) directed by Terrence Malick.
A Hidden Life is also based on a true story, but that movie is presented in a very deliberately artistic way. Malick uses techniques such as abruptly cutting to new scenes in the middle of conversations, revealing only partial information in non-chronological order, and the near-constant use of montages with only diegetic sound. It’s quite different, but it skillfully presents emotional and thematic information (as opposed to synoptic information) in an unconventional way.
Early on in Sound of Freedom I wondered if director Alejandro Monteverde was going for the same kind of style. But the presentation of information in this movie was…jarring. Why did this work in A Hidden Life but not in Sound of Freedom?
Regarding the plot of A Hidden Life, not much happens. Franz Jägerstätter refuses to pledge his allegiance to Hitler, and almost the whole film showcases the reactions of himself and others to that one decision. Montages and snippets of disembodied dialogue work for this.
The heroism of Tim Ballard is a different type of heroism. In Sound of Freedom, a lot happens. The circumstances, stakes, and decisions are always changing. Ballard is an undercover agent constantly adapting to the environment, but the Sound of Freedom doesn’t adapt.
It’s been stated in interviews that Jim Caviezel was chosen for this role due to his expressions, his ability to “say more with his eyes than his mouth.” It’s true, he does this well. I know because I watched him do that and nothing else for two straight hours.
In an effort to maintain the emotional weight of the content, the emotions are the center of every scene. There are at least three problems with this.
First, it undercuts the heroism of the lead. The display of inner turmoil and emotional breakdown is an important part of the story. Part. A moment to be displayed in between other moments. This script portrays Tim Ballard as sappy and emotional, constantly breaking down. I quickly stopped believing that Jim Caviezel could keep it together long enough to conduct a rescue mission.
Second, it is exhausting to the audience. Films need contrast and variability. An orchestra right at the peak of the conflict can send chills down your spine. But an orchestra that plays throughout at the same intensity just irritates the other elements and numbs the audience to the tone. Viewers of Sound of Freedom might have a harder time appreciating the heaviness, because the heaviness is never displayed next to anything else.
Finally, it breaks the immersion when it doesn’t belong. Even if Ballard is an expressive, emotional person, not everyone in the world is. He would have to learn to speak the languages of practicality and stoicism just to convince other people to work with him. By not adapting the script to the different situations and characters, almost every interaction is reduced to a game of moral chicken, where individuals slow-whisper mantras at each other until the scene just ends.
“What if it was your daughter?”
“What if…it was…your daughter?”
“What…if…it…was…your…daughter?”
To highlight one specific example: The one-on-one conversation between Ballard and Vampiro after they discovered that the US government no longer supported their operation. On a superficial level this scene is strung together with unnatural dialogue and Hallmark clichés, like the character who starts to walk away, is asked a simple question, and dramatically returns to their seat, removes their hat, takes a drink, and begins talking…so…slooooooooooooow. Just for nerdy film reasons, I wish this scene would have been influenced with the reality of how men like this talk to each other.
But the icing on the cake, is that I believe some realism would have served this scene narratively as well. For example, it could convey that the mission to end human trafficking isn’t just for sappy moralists with shared principles. The mission succeeds when ideologues, stoics, contrarians, utilitarians, bleeding hearts, soldiers, and geniuses all find their role and inspire each other by their differences. And if you think this vision is too ambitious, please consider this scene of only four minutes. These conversations have all the features of real-life conversations: confusion, interruption, verbal pauses, contradiction, things that human people would actually say, even clashing personalities, and yet at the end of this scene all the parties have synchronized around their shared mission: a reverse dream heist (or something). This is a natural-sounding way to present synoptic information.
This lesson, more than any other, is what I wish I could spray out of a firehose onto the whole pureflix bargain bin of Christian movies.
Still, none of these critiques are crippling to Sound of Freedom or the experience of watching it. And I apologize for comparing it, even momentarily, to much worse films like God’s Not Dead. The Sound of Freedom is set apart by aspects of the film that are executed masterfully.
The cinematography is great throughout. The closeups, color saturation, and editing all serve the narrative and the themes. Just to gush about one example: The film begins and ends with nearly identical shots: a zooming view of Rocío sitting on her bed drumming a song. I think is is narratively brilliant. It shows how the story that we just watched was one of restoration. In this particular case, the issue was resolved. But this editing choice has thematic implications too. The end of this story was just like the beginning, which draws your attention to the immense scale of this problem, that it feels never-ending, and that the solution is not some alien utopia, but to return to the innocence which we started with.
The child actors are magnificent.
All of the acting is very good, one of the strong points across the board. But I found the child actors to be exceptional, and these clearly aren’t 16-year-olds playing 9-year-olds. They’re just very talented young kids.
The story overall is also very well done. They successfully provided a conclusion to this particular story while also leaving audiences with the realization of how much work is yet to be done, which leads me to the next section…
Links
The film has received some criticism for their call-to-action being disappointing and cyclical (self-serving?). They simply encourage people who have seen the movie to encourage more people to see the movie. Regardless of why they made this decision, it didn’t take me long to identify a couple of organizations dedicated to this cause and also directly affiliated with Tim Ballard.
The SPEAR Fund and Operation Underground Railroad. Both accept monetary donations.
Fun Facts
Any film that is based on a true story presents opportunities for interesting comparisons between the reality and the depiction. This film is no different in that regard, and the subject matter of the true story is especially inspiring, so I’ll conclude by sharing a few factoids I had come across:
The Vampiro character represents a real person (anonymous to this day), and during the events of the film was referred to within the US government by his code name “BATMAN”.
The sting operation that takes place midway through the film was based on a much more complex scheme over three different locations. When it was over, more than 120 children were rescued.
The movie maintains a PG-13 rating. Producer Eduardo Verástegui made a promise to his mother that she’d never have to close her eyes while watching any of the films he’s worked on. The worst crimes and behaviors are only implied and talked about on screen.
While filming on location in Latin America, the cast and crew were protected by a small team of ex-Navy SEALs. The security team had used their expertise to identify trafficking behavior in nearby areas and took action. Estimates are that more than a dozen children were rescued while actors were depicting the earlier rescue operations.
If there are any other movies, books, or tautological arguments you would like to hear a review of, please leave them in a comment.
If you believe any of the points made in this review have been insufficiently Steelmanned, please breathe, count to ten, and then leave your concerns in a comment.
Loved reading this. Curious if you have any thoughts on the impact on the child actors, of doing work with such dark and heavy material (if anyone will do it with thoughtful consideration seems like this would be the group to do so)