Review of Sound of Freedom, directed by Alejandro Gómez Monteverde

This was a movie I knew existed solely because of my AMC A List subscription, but probably would have never seen if my mother hadn’t begged my sister and I to go see it.

So we ended up booking a screening on a Saturday matinee, and I was shocked that the screening we were at was fully booked. I didn’t think anyone was going to see a movie like this, especially when it’s the summer and it’s blockbuster screening. My local AMC struggles to fill seats for indie movies.

I will admit, I came into this movie with suspicions. I have reservations about white male savior stories and human trafficking, because if you don’t end up doing these kinds of movies right, it can be dangerous.

I did not really enjoy Sound of Freedom, and while my mother and sister did, I had to explain to them that just because it has a good message does not mean it’s a good movie. I agree that the message in these kinds of movies are important, but at the same time, people fail to realize that cinema has to be used properly and delicately. I’m going to get into why in the review, but this is my preliminary thoughts to lead into this.

Onwards with the review!

Tim Ballard hatches a plan to rescue trafficked children in Latin America.

Rather than recalling the entire plot of this one (you can easily Google it), I think I’d like to dedicate this review towards breaking down my thoughts on what unfolded on the screen. I think my biggest technical problem in this movie is the pacing overall—once we see Tim rescue the brother, it starts to go downhill from there.

You’re going into this movie knowing how it’s going to end, but I think that it tries to do too much and it loses its footing when it comes to pacing because of that. I was starting to nod off when Tim was heading on his next adventure to save the sister, and that entire sequence began to feel unnecessary, too. The film needed to decide between a drama and an action movie, and it veered too much into action in a way where it didn’t commit at all.

My other key problem with the film is how it depicts the sexual violence against these kids. We get these shots of the girls in the bed knowing what’s going to happen to them next, but then, as the audience, this is intended for us to get emotionally sucked into the act being committed.

This is a slippery slope in film, as the only Latin American women and girls depicted are either trafficked or a part of the ring itself. That’s not a good look, and it perpetuates stereotypes about women in the region—especially when a male white savior is involved with saving them. I also began to wonder about the safety practices on set, and whether these kinds of scenes were necessary too.

For example, we already know what’s happening to these kids. The intentional decision to show a glimpse of it can be disturbing for many audience viewers, and also a hook for the filmmakers to get us into the fact it’s real.

But when this is a real world situation happening in Latin America currently, simulating it to me feels a bit off. It may have been better to omit those kinds of scenes completely, but you can show the reactions of the kids, like the sister in the bathtub.

There’s plenty of shots in this film to remind us Tim is a family man, including the shots where his wife is on the phone with him, her cross necklace very much in sight.

As soon as I saw in the credits that Angel Studio was the one behind this film, I instinctively knew we were going to be getting religious monologues. And then we got the whole “Children of God” monologue. I’m not someone who’s anti-religion in film; we can’t depict people’s honest experiences without factoring in things like religion to the overall narrative of a person’s life.

But I firmly began to think that the demographic for this film was conservative white Christians judging by who was in the audience at my theater, and the fact my mother even knew about it (she’s deeply religious).

Overall Thoughts

Finally, one of the biggest problems that came off as extremely ignorant to me is this: in the epilogue, the main actor likens sex trafficking to modern day slavery (I won’t fight that argument, it works in some ways), and that he wants the film to be like Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Now that was extremely off the mark—I was horrified when he made that comparison. You cannot be comparing the suffering of the Black community to the sex trafficking going on.

These can be comparable in some ways, but you can’t be making blanket statements like that without someone getting offended, especially because he’s a white man affiliated with conspiracy theories.

I didn’t know the conspiracy theory part until after the film, but I was completely and utterly shocked that no one thought to say that message wasn’t okay, especially when the impacts of slavery are still very much alive in this country and aren’t gone. Like it’s such a hollow message, especially coming from a white man. It would’ve been so much more impactful to have a statement by a survivor, not just an actor who has never experienced such things in real life.

Great message and glad it’s getting awareness. But like I mentioned, you have to be extremely delicate taking care of such topics in cinema and how you depict them. I told my mother and sister I would have preferred a Latin American perspective about how it impacts them personally versus the savior story—but to each their own. Taste is subjective.

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