Sound Of Freedom

Every child should have the right to have a normal childhood where they live in a safe home, with people who make sure they are taken care of and feel loved. A lot of parents worldwide take good care of their children as well as family members. But what happens when your child is suddenly taken by a stranger and no one knows where your child is? This has to be one of the worst nightmares possible for any parent, not knowing if your child is ok or even alive. Unfortunately child trafficking is still today a very big problem worldwide and a lot of pedophiles worldwide work together to find new victims. Not all of them work together of course, some of them work on their own and find children online. No matter what country these pedophiles operate or no matter what they do in society, everyone of them should be locked up for life. Personally i would all want them all to be tortured to death but i know that is not allowed. When it comes to films regarding sex trafficking there are a couple of titles i have seen in the past that are powerful and disturbing for a number of reasons. One of my personal favourite films is actuall a Swedish film from director Lukas Moodyson who in the year of 2002 released his sex child trafficking film Lilya 4-ever. A very disturbing and powerful drama film that tells the story of 16-year-old Lilya Michailova ( Oksana Akinshina ) who lives with her mother. One day her mother suddenly decides to abandon Lilya to move with her boyfriend to America and leave her daughter with her aunt instead. Things doesn´t go well between Lilya and her aunt either so Lilya hangs out with her best friend Natasha ( Elina Benenson ) where she tries to talk Lilya into becoming a prostitute. Lilya refuses but ends up being raped by a group of young boys. Lilya finally thinks she will find hapiness with a young man she met, Andrei ( Pavel Ponomarypv ), who becomes her boyfriend and convinces her to move to Sweden. What Lilya doesn´t know is that Andrei have tricked her into seeing a pimp who imprisons her and rape her. Lilya 4-ever is a very strong film that should be seen, in my opinion the best film from director Lukas Moodyson. A film that really show the evil world of child trafficking. This year a film known as Sound Of Freedom made a lot of buzz in the media and online after doing really well at the box office, beating out big summer movies such as Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny. A film that takes on the very serious issue of child trafficking and how big this problem is worldwide. I got a chance to finally watch the film and the question is, is this one of the best films of the year or is this film hyped too much in media?

In 2013, Roberto Aguilar ( José Zúniga ) a poor father of two from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, is approached by a former beauty queen, Giselle ( Yessica Borroto ). She offers to sign his young children, Rocio Aguilar ( Cristal Aparicio ) and Miguel Aguilar ( Lucás Ávila ), to child modeling contracts. He accepts and take them to the photoshoot. When he returns to pick his children up they are gone. It is revealed that the children were sold to be used as sex slaves. In Calexico, California, Tim Ballard ( Jim Caviezel ) is a Special Agent for the Homeland Security Investigations ( HSI ). His job is taking a lot of toll on his personal life, considering how much horrible material he get to see finding pedophiles during the operations. He tricks a pedophile that they arrested Ernst Orshinsky ( Kris Avedisian ) that he also is a pedophile to get information out of him. Ernst believe Tim is also interested in children and give him very important information that helps Tim save the child Miguel from a pedophile. He meets Miguel´s father who thanks him for bringing his son back, but his daughter is still missing out there. Tim decides to take a very big risk and do an operation that is not approved by anyone, just to get Rocio and other children back to their families who are trapped in Colombia.

I have not personally heard more than two interviews with Timothy Ballard that this film is based on, regarding his work hunting down sex traffickers so i only know that this film is loosely based on the work that he did. What is true or not of the facts we find out in this film? It is possible that some details may have happened in real life and they decided to try and make a film trying to show how he and his team worked to catch criminals in action. I know he have been accused by five women of doing sexual acts on them during his operations. I have no idea if this is true or not so i choose to look at the film itself of what it is trying to say. The most important message of Sound Of Freedom is that no child should be living as a sex slave for anyone, no matter what age we are talking about. The film manage to get this message out there in a way that´s either too violent or show any sexual content. Since this is a very sensitive subject regarding child trafficking it´s hard not to be emotional by a film such as this. Especially when you find out how many children are victims out there worldwide, it is hard to believe we live in such an evil world where adults are attracted to innocent children. Lead actor Jim Caviezel ( perhaps mostly known from Mel Gibson drama film The Passion Of The Christ ) plays the character of Tim Ballard deliver a performance that may divide the audience. He doesn´t use a lot of dialogue in certain scenes but use more facial expressions and emotions as he tries to deal with the situation regaring missing children. I personally feel that Jim manage to portrait Tim in a way that matches well with the story and his profession. One of the performances that really stands out is the character Vampiro played by actor Bill Camp ( who is excellent in the Netflix mini series The Queen´s Gambit, a must watch ). Actor Gerardo Taracena also deliver a solid performance as the dangerous El Alacrán ( The Socrpion ). Sound Of Freedom may not be a film everyone can watch if they are too sensitive but it is a film that should be seen to show the crule world of child trafficking. Director Alejandro Monteverde clearly wanted this story to be told to make people aware of that you can´t trust anyone completely. Sound Of Freedom is a film that will affect you, i can promise you that.

Rating: DDD