No Sale
Good, god! SExy Jesus’s crowd-funded anti-trafficking crusader movie should have put some of that money into screenplay software.
Sound of Freedom
Director: Alejandro Monteverde • Writers: Rod Barr, Alejandro Monteverde
Starring: Jim Caviezel, Bill Camp, Javier Godino, Eduardo Verástegui, Mira Sorvino, José Zúñiga, Kurt Fuller, Gerardo Taracena, Yessica Borroto
USA • 2hrs 11mins
Opens Hong Kong November 23 • IIB
Grade: C-
Before we even come close to pointing out that Alejandro Monteverde’s anti-child trafficking action drama Sound of Freedom did not, in fact, fall victim to a libtard conspiracy, and had a distribution agreement with major studio 20th Century Fox before Disney scooped it up and shelved/buried half of Fox’s assets (the House of Mouse happily sold it back to its producers). Before we note that the faith-based streamer Angel Studios’ freaky AF “pay if forward” scheme is a brililant way to lay legit claim to a US$247.8 million box office haul without having to prove each ticket represented an actual viewer. And before we point out the film’s hero, Tim Ballard, departed the monumentally tone deaf-ly named Operation Underground Railroad (OUR) organisation he founded after sexual misconduct allegations (grooming, coercion harrassment, manipulation), an investigation, multiple lawsuits and a demand by the governor of Utah for a cirmiinal investigation – four weeks ago. It must be noted that Sound of Freedom as a film is not all that Jesus-y. What it is, is poorly paced (it’s been a while since I saw a movie with so many long stretches of silence and middle distance gazing) and hilariously oblivious to its own corniness. By the time the mid-credit sequence rolls around with actor Jim Caviezel telling us to scan the QR code (seriously, you gotta watch it) and buy a ticket for someone who may not be able to afford it becuase this is the most important film you’ll see this year, well. The film has already made a case for being shoddy as well as condescending. It seems to be saying that if the core Christian audience needed the star of The Passion of the Christ to clue them in to human trafficking they’re not as Christian as they think they are. The rest of us are, of course, probably pro-trafficking liberals.
Ladies and gentlemen, God’s children
But it’s really the pacing, cartoonish pervert villains, stiff performances and goofy dialogue that seals the deal. The strangely quiet action starts with Ballard (Caviezel) working for Homeland Security stateside, and getting increasingly frustrated with the limits of his power to actually save God’s children – who are not for sale, we’re told. While he fumes in his office, single Honduran dad Roberto Aguilar (José Zúñiga, Con Air, Narcos: Mexico, the first of many real actors in this film) has his children Rocío and Miguel kidnapped and shipped to Colombia. Somehow this is Ballard’s job, who manages to locate Miguel, bust the perv who purchased him (veteran “That Guy” Gary Basaraba), and reunite him with his father, but Rocío is in the wind. You know what comes next. Ballard goes rogue.
Okay, not quite yet. He gets permission from his boss in DC (Kurt Fuller, The Running Man, Supernatural) to pull a shady op with a Colombian cop, Jorge (Javier Godino), a reformed drug cartel boss, Vampiro (Bill Camp, Lincoln, The Queen’s Gambit) and a wealthy sponsor, Paulo Delgado (Eduardo Verástegui), to infiltrate Cartagena’s perv clubs to locate her. And they come so, so close – until DC sees the budget and shuts Ballard down. Now he goes rogue, with the blessing of his wife at home, Katherine (holy shit, Mira Sorvino, and is this what that rat bastard Harvey Weinstein did to her?), who’s a classic house plant, even when blurting tripe like “I feel like she’s my daughter too.” They track Rocío to the greasy (literally, they kept him oiled up), jungle-dwelling rebel El Alacrán (Gerardo Taracena, El Mariachi) and, duh, save the day.
Monteverde has pedestrian filmmaking tastes, and follows a safe, uncreative 1) establishing shot, 2) two-shot, 3) over the shoulder, 4) reverse pattern for his storytelling. It gets the job done, but not stylishly. DOPs Gorka Gómez and Andreu Aec run wild with dark, dank rooms, claustrophobic shipping containers, and imposing rainforests to signal danger danger danger. But aside from those basic locations and some hard shadows, there’s no real language to the filmmaking. And, really, if Sound of Freedom were just a little more inept it would be a strong candidate for a Good Bad Movie. The traffickers and their clientele are riotously gross and Caviezel is hyper-stoic. All the ingredients are there, particularly during the big finale when Ballard and Co. save 50-odd kids on Child Sex Island (all part of the shady op). They’re so righteous they don’t need counsellors or health care workers. The kids are happily playing games and singing songs (you know what that’s the sound of?) in the wake of the arrests of their captors/abusers/rapists. Do molested children act like this? Do pedophiles (which, for the record are discrete from child molesters and traffickers) all have busted bangs and snivelly smiles? Yes. Yes they do.
As I said, if you went into Sound of Freedom blind, nothing would suggest it was Jesus fare. The story is ground in general reality – trafficking is a huge problem – and most of us would likely do a little fist-pump if we heard about some normie fucking up a rapist’s shit. And there’s nothing wrong with making films for people who feel like they aren’t seen (unless, of course, the people are non-white/non-Christian/LGBTQ+, as this films “base” sees it, but that’s another story). The problem is making a films that are a hot mess. There’s a special place in the ninth circle for those. — DEK