SPOILER AND POTENTIALLY TRIGGERING CONTENT WARNING
'The Sound of Freedom' has been making unexpected waves in both the culture war and at the box office. Shot 5 years ago the film was shelved in the Disney acquisition of 20th Century Fox, subsequently the movie was acquired by Angel Studios, a divison of VidAngel, same folks who put out the popular 'Dry Bar Comedy' videos. Since it's opening on July 4th 'Sound of Freedom' has taken in a remarkable $96.2 million (as of July 19th) off its $14.5 million budget, a major and unexpected success story in a summer of flops.
TSOF tells the story of Tim Ballard, a special agent with The Department of Homeland Security who delt with child trafficking. Limited in what he could do by that government role, in 2013 he left the department and founded 'Operation Underground Railroad', a non-profit organization dedicated to combating sex trafficking, most famously by conducting military style search and rescue raids.
The movie provides a partially fictionalized account of the organizations founding, as well as telling a streamlined account of an elaborate sting operation conducted in Columbia, which rescued dozens of sex trafficking victims and saw the arrests of multiple perpetrators.
The movie gets the most out of its limited budget. From things I had heard beforehand I was worried that it might play like a TV pilot movie, but the film realltly does look cinematic and other then a somewhat clunky transition into the final act, it is well put together. Jim Caviezel is suitably stoic and fatherly in the lead role. The two lead kids are good, otherwise the acting is mostly middling, a couple of the bad guys venture into cartoony performances, while the MVP of the movie is Bill Camp, he elevates every scene he's in and gives a monologe which is the verbal high point of the picture.
The film does an admirable job of communicating the horror of its subject matter without getting graphic. The picture feels more grounded then I had expected and works reasonably well as both a thriller and a message picture. I liked it.
The film has gotten an unusual amount of criticism and has become something of a flashpoint in the American culture war. Among the criticisms directed at the movie are the inaccuracies in the film, most of these seem to be standard tweaks to simplify narrative and make the storyline more kinetic. It should be pointed out however that the final act is made up, Ballard did not go by himself into millita controlled Columbian jungle to rescue one girl and kill a man with his own bare hands, that's pure Hollywood.
The film has also been critiqued for focusing on a "stranger danger" abduction narrative, when at least in the U.S. children are far more likely to be sexualy abused by people they know, such as family members, then by total strangers.
The film has been mostly embraced by people on political Right, some of whom have looked askance at those on the Left as not being sufficiently on board with combating human trafficking. One thing that might turn more politically liberal or even moderate viewers off to the film, is the extent of the venn diagram overlap between the movies most vocal supports (and even its star Jim Caviezel) to Qanon and Qanon adjacent conspiracy theories, as well as simple Trumpism. The embrace of the film by "The Right" as a form of virtue signaling or dog whistle, seems to be what is turning off viewers outside that bubble. Also it's a film about sex trafficking, not a light subject matter well suited to date nights or family outings to the theater.
The films subject matter is of course a rightly uncomfortable one, but in the way it was approached on screen I found very little to object to. I think there could be some real positive repercussions from the film, both in terms of topical awareness and spuring more modestly budgeted, out of the box film offerings. ***
No comments:
Post a Comment