Sound of Freedom: Movie Review

Cast: Jim Caviezel, Bill Camp
Director: Alejandro Monteverde

Occasionally overwrought and heavy-handed, the conservative movie Sound of Freedom knows exactly what it's doing in its execution of a tale of child traffickers and bad guys.

But by painting everything in such broad brush strokes and by overly playing on the sentiment, the film's message is almost laughable when it needs to be horrific and unsettling.

Caviezel plays Tim Ballard, a former US government agent who embarks on a mission to take down a child sex-trafficking ring in Columbia when he decides enough is enough. As he launches Operation Underground Railroad, he finds himself pushed deeper into the world and more horrified by what he uncovers.

There's definitely something noble about a story such as this that shines a light on the horrors of child-sex trafficking. 

From overly cute children bathed in innocence to close ups of tears in eyes as agents look at the imagery uploaded to the web, the filmmakers know exactly what they want to do with this story - and they're not unashamed to manipulate you along the way.

But that becomes some of the problem of Sound of Freedom - its unwillingness to yield in the face of what it considers its conservative mission.

Almost every shot of Caviezel sees him bathed in beatific light, his blonde hair glistening as his eyes soften - it's almost parody but with religious overtones pushed to the fore. And the moment when a child presents Ballard with a Saint Timothy necklace is so on the nose, it's almost laughable how spoon-fed these proceedings are.

Alejandro Monteverde doesn't help things either - pretty much every shot of horror is ripped from the cliched annals of basic shock cinema, there's nothing original here to behold. 

There's nothing wrong or more admirable than the message within this film, but given how it's presented, it's hard to swallow at times. Which is a shame because it's a largely compelling and sickening story to tell, even before you consider the takeover from the right-wing conspiracy theorists that have so embraced this story in the US, seeking undertones that aren't there on the page.

Sound of Freedom may be viewed by some as  a call to arms, but it would have been a lot more successful if the writer / director had had some outside guidance to help mold a story that still shocked, but presented its cautionary edges in a more subtle way.