Uncle Trump’s Cabin – Weekend

“The Sound of Freedom” is being released in Russia, an unexpected sensation at the American box office of the Barbie Gamer era, but on our side of the Atlantic it looks very strange.

Text: Stanislav F. Rostotsky

According to competent sources, more people are involved in human trafficking today than at any time in human history, even if we take into account the times when slavery was completely legal. But often, in order to understand the scale of the problem, no overwhelming statistics are needed; one particular case is enough. When, after another operation to free children from the dungeons of Colombian traffickers, it turns out that not everyone was saved and the sister of a little boy remained in the clutches of the scoundrels (they were both deceived and taken out of Honduras), government agent Tim Ballard (Jim Caviezel) resigns all official powers and without weapons, almost alone, goes to the heart of the Bolivian jungle so that the Sound of Freedom can sound again, freely and widely, to any voices and to the accompaniment of all the folk instruments of Latin America that are at hand.

The main character of “The Sound of Freedom” is a real one, living today and personally insisting that he be played by Caviezel, a cisgender white man who once actually left government service and founded a foundation to save children from sexual slavery called “Operation Underground Railroad.” “, directly referring to the history of American slavery. More often than not, solid social dramas with this kind of characters are released in limited release towards the end of the year and they don’t really count on the box office until the Oscar nominations are announced. “Sound of Freedom” sounded completely different. To create and promote the film, which was declared from the very beginning as a “people’s film,” the film company Angel Studios used, it seems, all possible “bottom-up” marketing techniques, including a system where the viewer buys a ticket for someone else, like a cup of “suspended” coffee . All together, coupled with the excellent “sundress” that immediately unfolded, led to completely unprecedented results. At the very top of summer, on the long weekend on the occasion of the Independence Day public holiday, while in America, in anticipation of the start of the epic battle between “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer”, the new “Indiana Jones”, “Mission Impossible” and “Transformers” film were compared in the box office Alejandro Monteverde, worth $15 million, opened in America on three and a half thousand screens. And in two months it grossed 181 million at the domestic box office, that is, more than the new Indiana Jones, Mission Impossible and Transformers (not to mention every little thing like The Flash or Cocaine Bear). All this, as Igor Ilyinsky’s hero put it in the sanatorium vaudeville “Crazy Day,” “solely for the sake of small children.” And one could, with a calm soul, rejoice at the success of the guardians of all good things, if not for the excessive (including with regard to “suspended” tickets) support for the film, coming from followers of conspiracy theories, who are not alien to the most vigorous conspiracy theories of Donald’s admirers Trump, and Trump himself, who staged a special screening of “The Sound of Freedom” at his own golf club. In addition, in support of theories like the one that a certain hormone is produced in tortured children’s bodies, from which a rejuvenating potion is distilled for the powers that be, both the performer of the role of Ballard and Ballard himself spoke out.

However, in order to discern at least a pale shadow of conspiracy theories in what is happening on the screen, you need to be the hero of Mel Gibson from “Conspiracy Theory” or, better yet, even Mel Gibson himself. You might as well try to understand the basics of Dianetics by watching the movie “Battlefield Earth.” The general humanistic context is still at the forefront: in the program speech addressed to the viewer, which is delivered by Caviezel, who has emerged from the character, while the final credits roll across the screen, he expresses the hope that “The Sound of Freedom” will become for the 21st century what “The Shack” was Uncle Tom” for the century before last. And in an interview he recently admitted that this role was the most important for him after he played the Savior in Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” So if you stop combing dark rooms in search of non-existent reptilians and watch the film, as they say, with a blue eye, then you will see something cross between Steven Soderbergh’s “Traffic”, Marc Forster’s “Machine Gun Preacher” and, perhaps, Guy’s fresh “The Translator” Ritchie, but understood by Alejandro Monteverde in a rather unique way (his creative principles are best illustrated by the names of the prizes that his previous films received at festivals – awards like “Fate and Liberty” or “Crystal Heart”). The locales range from the Mexican border to the Colombian jungle and the general mood of righteous retribution initially gives hope for a powerful action film on the level of, if not “Commando,” then certainly “Reparations.” But after trying himself a couple of times in the relevant scenes, Monteverde decided not to go beyond the traditional ideas of punishment and revenge. And therefore, whenever the plot requires the appearance of a “god from the machine,” his role is taken not by a lone vigilante who has gone beyond the limits, but by the impersonal collective force of special forces terminators, calmly putting everyone face down. Let the Lord choose his own.

In theaters from September 14

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