2023 | PG-13 | 2h 15m | Action, Biography, Drama
As an admitted cinephile and a film reviewer who’s seen thousands of films, I recall only one about child trafficking: 2019’s actioner “Rambo: Last Blood,” starring Sylvester Stallone. But now, there’s a much more powerful and much more realistic film on the topic: the July 4 release, “Sound of Freedom.”
Mexican-born director Alejandro Monteverde’s new movie is based on real events and a real hero. The immensely talented Jim Caviezel portrays a former agent for the Department of Homeland Security, Tim Ballard. It’s an incisive film that not only entertains, but also illuminates.
Child Trafficking
The film begins in Honduras. Rocio Aguilar (Cristal Aparicio) is an 11-year-old girl whose family is so poor that she beats a pair of slippers on a piece of wood instead of using drumsticks and a drum as she sings a beautiful song.A woman named Katy Gisselle (Yessica Borroto Perryman) drops by and meets with Rocio’s father, single dad Roberto (José Zúñiga). Gisselle purports to be the founder of an entertainment company and tells him that Rocio seems to have what it takes to make it big in the industry. Rocio beams at her father with excitement, and he agrees not only to accompany his daughter to Gisselle’s big “annual audition” the next day, but also to take along Rocio’s younger brother Miguel (Lucas Avila).
Roberto and his two kids ride in a beat-up bus to the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa (a city with one of the highest murder rates in the world), and when they arrive at the audition office, Gisselle tells Roberto that no “audition fathers” are allowed in. He’ll have to come back later that evening to pick them up. Because Roberto sees a professional setting with cameras and other kids excitedly talking about their potential prospects, he leaves his kids there.
Then, in what could only be described as a parent’s worst nightmare, Roberto returns to pick up his children and finds the entire office stripped bare and all of the kids gone.
We are transported to a normal-looking house in the city of Calexico, California, on the Mexican border, where seedy Ernst Oshinsky (Kris Avedisian) is offering a “spring sampler” of children—via the internet—to prospective clients. Unbeknown to the child trafficker, agents of the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) department, including Ballard, are staking out his place.
After performing a successful sting operation on Oshinsky, Ballard cleverly poses as someone who identifies with the trafficker in order to gain his trust. Ballard then convinces his boss, Frost (Kurt Fuller), to release Oshinsky so that the criminal can lead them to bigger fish. Ballard, in the guise of a fellow pervert who has to hide his pedophilic desires because of his job with the Department of Homeland Security, tells Oshinsky that he wants a “real one.”
In a show of gratitude for granting his freedom, Oshinsky agrees to offer Ballard a trafficked child and shows the agent a picture of a boy. The image is that of recently disappeared Miguel Aguilar, renamed “Teddy Bear.”
Ballard and his department track down Miguel and arrest his trafficker at the Mexican border. The intrepid agent then learns that after being kidnapped, Miguel and his sister Rocio were transported by shipping container to Colombia and separated soon after arriving.
The Impressive Cast
The acting in the film is outstanding from top to bottom. Caviezel’s ability to portray Ballard as a man tormented by the horrors he’s witnessed during his 12-year career in human-trafficking investigations is incredible. In certain scenes, his eyes emote so much sorrow that you feel the character’s pain. His skill at conveying Ballard’s demeanor of a “quiet storm” is consistently mesmerizing and lends gravitas to the film.Another stand-out actor is Bill Camp as Vampiro, a similarly anguished soul who turned his back on cartel life and now runs a clandestine operation in Colombia that rescues children from traffickers. He and Ballard identify deeply with one another and go all out in their extremely dangerous efforts to rescue children from the hands of some very bad people.
In one engrossing male-bonding scene, Vampiro describes to Ballard how he transformed his life and gave it new meaning just in the nick of time. He tells Ballard, “When God tells you what to do ... you cannot hesitate.”
Mira Sorvino is also impressive as Ballard’s wife, Katherine, who supports her husband’s burning desire to save children. Fortunately, director Monteverde (who also co-wrote the script) didn’t pad the movie with unnecessary home-life scenes—rather, there are a few touching moments between husband and wife that convincingly convey their mutual love.
A Most Important Film
The film is a thriller with constant tension as Ballard maneuvers through the sleazy world of human trafficking; you never know if his cover is going to be blown. This is especially true when he becomes fed up with the HSI’s bureaucracy and quits his job, yet continues his perilous investigations with a small cadre of like-minded individuals.In addition to being a solid thriller, this film sprinkles into its dialogue lesser-known aspects of the human-trafficking industry. For instance, we learn that “you can sell a bag of cocaine one time ... but a child ... you can sell a 5-year-old kid, five to 10 times a day for 10 years straight.”
It is also revealed that human trafficking has already surpassed the illegal arms trade in terms of revenue and is well on its way to outstripping the long-reigning king of crime, the illegal drug trade.
I can sympathize with his sentiments. As a writer and journalist, I will say that this is the most important film review I’ve ever written because it can help to raise awareness of the rapidly expanding business of child trafficking.
The sobering text shown near the end of the film is something we should all heed: “Human trafficking is a 150 billion-dollar-a-year business. The United States is one of the top destinations for human trafficking and is among the largest consumers of child sex. There are more humans trapped in slavery today than [at] any other time in history—including when slavery was legal. Millions of these slaves are children.”
