Sound of Freedom (2023)

Review: written August 2023

Slow burn, but earnestly thought provoking

Child sex abuse – it’s not exactly a crowd pleasing topic. It’s something you’d shy away from in conversation, too disturbing to even consider your response to, perhaps. So why make, much less pay to go and watch, a movie about it at the cinema? Well, because when you’ve got your heart in the right place, as this film clearly does, there’s a strong message, or maybe even call it a warning, to get out there. This is an exponentially growing branch of crime, and the trade in children and child slavery has reached unheard of levels.

The story told here is a true one, and illustrates the issue as a whole by using the story of a young brother and sister taken in Honduras into slavery. Jim Cavaziel plays the Homeland Security officer Tim Ballard, leading a task force to capture paedophiles in the US, but wrestling with how the children themselves are rarely if ever rescued. He decides to risk everything to find some closure to the horrific images he sees all the time, by going to Columbia to rescue a child, the sister of a boy he manages to save at the US Mexico border. The subsequent story might be in plot terms a ‘man on a mission’ movie, the kind of movie Liam Neeson churns out perhaps – but is played here with significantly more passion and nuance. ‘What if it was one of your kids’ is the sobering thought uttered several times during the movie, and it puts the heroics into real perspective. The heroics of one many fighting to free the kids, yes, but more especially the heroics of vulnerable and helpless children who look out for each other and find ways to survive the unthinkable.

It's not a happy watch. It left me feeling scarred and desperately wanting to wash it all off – but it never shows more than it has to, and it’s the acting all round which sells the message, especially the young actors. It might take its time (sometimes frustratingly so) but in the end those slower beats in the story don’t harm the final soul-churning impact. Not an entertainment then – but an important watch. Not a joyful movie, but a movie that has a message of hope – if we as a society and community take action.