Review of the thriller “Sound of Freedom” by Alejandro Gomez

The Sound of Freedom by Alejandro Gómez Monteverde is being released, a dramatic thriller about a fighter against human trafficking that has become an unexpected hit at the American summer film box office. The biggest surprise for Yulia Shagelman It turns out how few surprises this film, which has made waves overseas, offers.

If you watch Sound of Freedom without knowing about the controversy and scandals surrounding it, it looks like a completely typical Hollywood production. All the ingredients are present: a real story at the core, a highly social topic about which there is nevertheless a public consensus (of course, the abduction and sexual exploitation of children is a terrible evil), simple and intelligible formal solutions, an uplifting message, moderate criticism of the American government bureaucracy, a noble lone hero who broke ties with the latter and saved human lives. He is played by James Caviezel – the prototype, founder and former head of the anti-human trafficking organization Operation Underground Railroad (OUR), Tim Ballard, insisted on such a casting, having been impressed by the actor’s performance in “The Count of Monte Cristo” (2002). Although “The Sound of Freedom,” in which Caviezel continually looks somewhere or at someone soulfully and his gaze is moistened with tears, of course, refers to his other, more famous role – Jesus in “The Passion of the Christ” (2004).

What distinguishes “Sound of Freedom” from the standard products of major studios is that it is too obvious an emphasis on Christian values ​​(major studios, counting on a wide and diverse audience, still usually work a little more subtly). However, it was a large studio – 20th Century Fox – that was supposed to become the distributor of the film, shot back in 2018. But in 2019, Fox was bought by Disney, and the film, like many others, was in limbo until its producer Eduardo Verastegui, a popular Mexican singer and soap opera actor who also stars in it, bought the rights to it. small role. It took another four years to find a new distributor – the company Angel Studios, which specializes in “biblical” films and TV series and often raises funds for its projects through crowdfunding.

Over the years, Caviezel has become a conspiracy theorist and supporter of the QAnon movement, sharing his theories, such as an international conspiracy of pedophile Satanists who kill children in order to extract anti-aging hormones from their bodies. The same views are shared by Ballard, whose organization was first the focus of a journalistic investigation that concluded that she was somewhat exaggerating the scale of her good deeds, and then quietly parted ways with her boss without much explanation. Verastegui, on the other hand, became an ultra-right political activist, calling, among other things, for a ban on abortion (after the film was released, he applied to participate in the Mexican presidential elections in 2024).

All this created a certain context around “The Sound of Freedom”, which did not hinder, if not contribute to, its financial success: to date, the film with a budget of $14.5 million has grossed more than $183 million at the American box office, taking tenth place in the list of highest-grossing films year, and this without a traditional advertising and marketing campaign. In addition to conspiracy forums, it was supported by Donald Trump, Mel Gibson and Elon Musk, conservative public organizations and churches bought out entire movie theaters, and in addition, those who wished could pay for a “suspended” movie ticket for less wealthy fellow citizens in order to further spread the good news. Director Monteverde, in turn, ardently denies any connections of the film with QAnon, distances himself from the views of his colleagues and emphasizes that he himself is completely out of politics.

There are no Satanists in “The Sound of Freedom,” just as there is nothing at all that goes beyond the conventional framework. This is a well-filmed, although without a bright author’s handwriting, a story in which there is a place for both drama and action. The second, however, is much less, although the best part of the film is the hero’s descent into the Colombian criminal underbelly in search of kidnapped children. Including because here the stoic to the point of wooden Caviezel has a colorful screen partner: Bill Camp in the role of a repentant drug dealer named Vampiro, adding colors and halftones to the black and white picture of the authors’ world. The last third – the rescue of the girl Rocio (Crystal Aparicio) from the clutches of rebels in the jungle – completely goes into the territory of a not very believable action movie. It is noticeable that Monteverde, who began working on the script back in 2015, was indeed guided more by Denis Villeneuve’s “The Killer” and the series “Narcos”, which were just then released, rather than by feverish Internet fantasies.

However, the director does not forget for a minute the importance of his message, and his edifying and manipulative nature ultimately outweighs the immediate impressions of the unspeakable horrors shown and hidden behind the scenes. This turns Sound of Freedom into a film that will leave viewers more likely to breathe a sigh of relief and be glad that what they saw will never happen to them and their children than to really think about the reality of modern slavery.