Sound of Freedom Has a Good Chance of Changing How We See Child Trafficking
The old saying is particularly true when it comes to movies, that art imitates life, which imitates art. In other words, cinema has a unique ability to represent reality in a way that influences the viewer more powerfully than any other medium. Jaws made people afraid to swim in the ocean, An Inconvenient Truth reignited the climate change discussion, and The Matrix turned metaphysics into a water cooler conversation. Striving for a similar place in movie history, Sound of Freedom activates an issue that no movie before it has attempted to mobilize.
Make no mistake, however: Sound of Freedom covers no subject matter that is new to the avid viewer. We’ve seen Liam Neeson in Taken doggedly chasing down the sex traffickers of his underage daughter, or Sylvester Stallone in Rambo: Last Blood more recently taking gory pleasure in the same task. But unlike those movies — which don’t fail to represent the problem of child sex trafficking as an international, widespread phenomenon — Sound of Freedom positions it as a pressing crisis — one that we have the power to fix. And that’s what gives it the potential to be revolutionary.
Jim Caviezel plays Special Agent Tim Ballard, who endeavors to save a child named Rocio, after retrieving her brother from the sex trafficking ring that captured them. On its premise, it sounds like any number of movies we’ve seen before, except that in Sound of Freedom, the fate of the trafficked victim provides more than just the narrative push for a rescue or vengeance story. It challenges the audience, who is asked do one simple thing: to stop seeing the ugly reality of child sex trafficking and child slavery as it is so often portrayed — an unavoidable fact of life in a dark world.
In order to accomplish his mission, Ballard must continually recruit the cooperation of his colleagues and peers, who — each at their own moments — are either too complacent or too afraid to help. Early on, Ballard’s case manager wants to close the investigation after the retrieval of Miguel, not wanting to risk the jurisdictional quagmire of pursuing his sister over the Columbian border. Later, Paul Delgado, a billionaire intelligence asset who has helped on previous missions is reluctant to lend his island property for a groundbreaking sting operation, which ultimately results in a critical lead. And in the final leg, Ballard’s closest allies encourage him not to go as far into the mouth of danger as will ultimately be necessary to save Rocio, once she is finally located.
Ballard’s biggest obstacles are the people already on his side, echoing how our own apathy and lack of political will on the issue — perhaps even our fear — hinders any meaningful action. When Caviezel persuades these characters as Ballard, he is also speaking to the audience as himself, sometimes coming dangerously close to breaking the sacred fourth wall. In a way, he plays double duty as feature film star and documentary narrator, and this fine line, which is well navigated, is what makes the movie a promising vehicle for change.
Sound of Freedom aims to repoint our consciousness on an issue that ought neither to be political nor controversial. A thoughtful viewer might ask why, of the myriad social causes for which we are constantly being recruited as activists, this one seems never to be touched — and more often ridiculed or minimized. As I stated earlier, what we consume for entertainment has a curious ability to influence our thoughts and passions, and in the landscape of streaming services and Hollywood, a movie like Sound of Freedom might almost get drowned out. Luckily we have the opportunity to amplify it over the noise. It’s time to sound off.
