The Sound of Freedom

Amanda Lauer reviews the new Jim Caviezel film, based on the true story of a man who endeavored to rescue hundreds of children from sex traffickers.

“God’s children are not for sale.” Those words uttered by Jim Caviezel in the movie The Sound of Freedom explain the motivation of the character he played, Tim Ballard, a former government agent turned vigilante who embarks on a dangerous mission to rescue hundreds of children from sex traffickers.

This movie, which, according to Caviezel, was five years in the making as there were so many roadblocks thrown in their way, is based on a true story. While I had reservations about watching this because of the subject matter, I knew it was important to learn more about this worldwide atrocity. My first exposure to the topic of human sex trafficking was in 2017 when I was assigned to write about this for the Green Bay Diocesan newspaper, The Compass. It’s a massive issue in our state because of highway corridors linking major cities in three states. Those interviews were eye-opening, to say the least.

Statistics quoted in the movie show that the problem has gotten exponentially worse since then. Human trafficking is a $150 billion-dollar-a-year business. There are more humans trapped in slavery today than any other time in history, including when slavery was legal. Millions of these slaves are children. The United States is one of the top destinations for human trafficking and is among the largest consumers of child sex.

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Caviezel and nearly the entire cast—especially the child actors who portrayed the trafficked children—did outstanding work in their roles. Oscar-worthy in my opinion. This compelling and amazingly well-made movie focused on an 11-year-old girl and her 7-year-old brother, living in poverty in South America, whose father was deceived into turning them over to a woman who made a career of procuring children for this insidious industry. That showed one way that children are sourced, another way is kidnapping. There was actual black-and-white security camera footage in the film showing children being abducted from streets and sidewalks all over the world.

It brought tears to my eyes witnessing what these children go through. That being said, the film was done sensitively so the abuse was implied or off screen and the reactions of the children were muffled to make it less upsetting to watch. One disturbing note brought up in the film was that many cartels are moving from the drug industry to human trafficking because cocaine can be sold once but a child can be sold five or six times a day for sometimes as long as 10 years.

At the conclusion of the film Caviezel talks directly to the audience, encouraging everyone who watched The Sound of Freedom to spread the word about the movie so that millions of people will see it. Exposing this horror to the general population may help eradicate or at least lessen human trafficking. My resolve is to pray daily for all human beings in the bond of slavery, pray for the conversion of the traffickers and pedophiles who have created this market, and pray for the safety of those men and women putting their lives on the line to end the selling of human beings, particularly God’s precious children.