Sound of Freedom (2023)

Arguably, the meta-textual conversation surrounding Sound of Freedom, a Jim Caviezel-starring movie about Tim Ballard and his quest to fight child sex-traffickers, has completely overshadowed any commentary relating to the film itself. It has become a lightning rod issue for many and an item of tribal affiliation for political zealots. This has led me – a lifelong contrarian who has never been keen on taking sides in any conflict without forming his own opinions first – to actively seek out this movie when it finally opened last weekend in my neck of the woods. I ventured expecting I-don’t-exactly-know-what from this alleged QAnon-adjacent piece of propaganda and – as described by some on the burning skip formerly known as Twitter – apparently a borderline dangerous movie.

Here’s my verdict. Sound of Freedom is not dangerous. It’s not a bellicose piece of right-wing enablement. It’s just a thriller anchored by a strong message, whose only major sin is that it’s not that interesting to look at.

Interestingly, the premise of this movie alone is probably compelling enough to imagine it could be a potentially interesting experience. After all, there’s something inherently intriguing about Ballard’s journey from working as a special agent tasked with tracking down paedophiles to becoming an exfiltration specialist bent on saving as many children as he humanly could. Therefore, on paper Sound of Freedom has it all: high stakes, a lot of suspense, secret identities, infiltrations, dangerous criminals, rogue agents and mission-oriented set pieces. But that’s on paper.

How it all translates to the screen is a bit different because, as I mentioned above, Sound of Freedom is also a message movie, which means that the filmmakers who put this together weren’t necessarily as interested in telling a compelling story or letting the story speak for itself, as they were in making sure we all got the message they set out to advance. Consequently, this entire movie is profoundly heavy-handed and spares absolutely no expense when it comes to laying out its agenda for everyone to see and screaming it into your ears in case you didn’t get the picture. In fact, this movie is so pervasively ham-fisted that it eventually becomes impossible to distinguish whether it has ventured into the realm of unintentional self-parody, or if it is still just unabashedly earnest in how it treats its own self-diagnosed mission from God.

I can only surmise that this is where the point of contention is for most viewers who may not be attuned to the level of zeal baked into what this movie is trying to do. It is almost discombobulating to see how the filmmakers make conscious decisions for Jim Caviezel to look directly into the lens – at you! – and tell you with utmost solemnity how God’s children are not for sale, or to ask you what you would do if it were your child. The immediate kneejerk response to this kind of extreme heavy-handedness is to reject it outright, but you have to remember that this is what Sound of Freedom is. This movie is designed to be on the nose because it does not care to entertain you. It is here to send a message and bring light to matters the filmmakers deem extremely important. Whether they are successful is a separate matter.

From my own personal perspective, I think I would have preferred if a movie like Sound of Freedom trusted in my ability to comprehend storytelling or even in my rudimentary morals to get on board with the message built into the narrative. In a way, as I was watching this movie I secretly wondered what it would look like if it had been directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Mark Boal. Or written and directed by Mel Gibson. I think the difference would be staggering in that the resulting film would not have to speak to me directly the way it does now, and the filmmakers would have enough foresight not to let the story drown itself in unnecessary pathos and hence relinquishing most of its visceral potential. That’s the key.

As it stands, Sound of Freedom is an unfortunate bore that frolics in its own profundity and effectively disconnects the viewer from the message it wants to advance. It’s just too overbearing to be effective and in all honesty, with each passing minute, the film becomes progressively harder to take seriously. Look, I fully appreciate the idealism and devotion needed to sacrifice your own professional career and risk your own life if only to deliver one single child from despicable evil. “Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire” – to borrow from Schindler’s List. I get it. But I still seriously contend that the movie could have spoken for itself and on its own terms without ever needing anyone to ladle overbearing score over top of every single scene, or without anyone having to look Jim Caviezel in the eye.

As a result of this utter lack of trust in my own ability to decide what’s important, what’s right and what’s wrong – which is something very religious people tend to assume, because without The Good Book they would not be able to make moral decisions on their own – what could have been a successful thriller ends up a bit too painful to sit through to make an impact. Too slow, too meditative, too intentionally profound is what Sound of Freedom is. It is as though Alejandro Monteverde (who directed it), Rod Barr (who co-wrote it), Jim Caviezel, Tim Ballard and everyone else involved in bringing this true story to the big screen against all odds simply didn’t realize that the most impactful movies tend to also be great movies on their own terms.

They just could not fathom that what they should have strived to do was to make their own The Battle of Algiers. Unfortunately, they fell well short of Pontecorvo’s unsettling masterpiece. They turned a potentially powerful story into a sanctimonious snoozefest that simply fails to connect on any appreciable level. Thus, if Sound of Freedom is even remotely dangerous to anyone, it is to those individuals who suffer from sleep apnoea.