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It was an unlikely flare up in the cultural war. Or, at least, it would have been so five or six years ago. Or a decade ago? Or a generation ago?

When, exactly, did things get like this? Um… get like what you ask? I’m talking about the movie I recently watched; an experience more dominated by its politics than the film’s merit.

Sound of Freedom was actually slated to come out five or six years ago and one has to wonder how different its release would have seemed then. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been quite so popular or made so much money. Maybe the media wouldn’t have jumped on it so viciously. Maybe a giant media corporation would have just used its clout and financial muscle to kill it. Oh, wait…

Sound of Freedom portrays events from 2013 and work began on a dramatic version of those events in 2015. The story is about Tim Ballard, a Homeland Security agent, who leaves his job after being frustrated with his government’s ineffectiveness in saving children from sexual enslavement. In the film, which is highly fictionalized in its particular details, he travels to the FARC strongholds of Columbia to rescue a young girl who had been kidnapped from Honduras.

Ballard was obviously a key driver in getting the film made. The film was produced by Eduardo Verástegui, who kinda/sorta plays himself in the film. It was directed by Alejandro Gomez Monteverde, a Mexican-born, naturalized American whose prior claim to fame was the film Bella. Bella deals with abortion, and not in the politically-correct way, so naturally the film was trashed by critics. That didn’t stop it from making a tidy profit and winning the “People’s Choice Award” at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival.

As development progressed, Sound of Freedom attracted a certain kind of Hollywood activist. Mel Gibson, Tony Robbins, and other wealthy conservatives signed on in executive producer roles, providing both financial backing and industry clout. Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ star, Jim Caviezel, came on to play Ballard and #MeToo advocate and Weinstein accuser Mira Sorvino plays his wife.

The film was picked up by Fox, to be distributed through a Latin American subsidiary in 2018. And then it wasn’t. On December 14th, 2017, Disney announced that they would be acquiring 21st Century Fox. Sound of Freedom, now owned by Disney, was not a film they were interested in releasing. While this is par for the course in the entertainment industry relative to mergers, it is a little bit suspect given everything else about this film (not to mention some of the accusations flying around Disney).

It was at this point that Angel Studios once again came to the rescue. While Disney did shelve the film, they allowed the producers to purchase back the distribution rights. That in hand, Angel was approached, who used their crowd-sourcing methodologies to sign on to the project. The distribution was, as with The Chosen, crowdfunded, allowing a release (in 23 international markets) in the summer of 2023. Also similarly to The Chosen, they encouraged a “pay it forward” viewing model where those who enjoyed the film could purchase tickets to allow someone else to see it for free.

In theaters and doing well, the film received blowback from traditional industry channels. Not that the criticism was exactly wrong – but usually people who don’t like a movie will just ignore it, not go out of their way to rip it apart. Once again, the ferocity of the criticism makes one wonder whether something deeper was going on. Was it the subject of the film that upset them rather than the film itself?

Criticism included the amount of embellishment to a narrative that was billed as “based on a true story.” While both true and valid, this kind of casual relationships with the facts seems more the norm than the exception when it comes to Hollywood. The spotlight shown upon on Tim Ballard turned up some scandals which, while true, might also be considered suspicious in their timing.

Ballard formed the organization Operation Underground Railroad in 2013 as the instrument for the rescue work portrayed in the film. He testified before the U.S. House in May of 2015 and before the Senate in March of 2019 and was appointed as a member of the White House1 Public-Private Partnership Advisory Council to End Human Trafficking in that same year. In 2016, the complaints began to surface regarding improperly-conducted raids. The Justice department issued a memo advising against agency cooperation with Ballard’s organization.

As he became more prominent, his methods were criticized for ignoring the rights of the accused and, specifically, disseminating personal information about his targets without due process.

In the years after the film was completed (but before its release), the accusations against Ballard became more and more specific. In 2020, the State of Utah opened an investigation about illegal fundraising, although the charges were later dropped. The punditry noticed that Ballard’s statements sometimes referenced conspiracy theories that had been proven to be false; theories associated with the QAnon posts2.

The now-bankrupt webzine Vice and fellow traveler Slate had a series of exposé articles on Ballard and his organization. In a combination of specifics (video taken during a raid) and suggestions (that Ballard’s organization used psychics to “investigate” traffickers), they portrayed Operation Underground Railroad and Ballard very unfavorably. With the film’s 2023 release, this became part of the criticism of the movie.

Around the time of the film’s release, Ballard announced he was stepping away from the organization as a number of accusations of sexual misconduct surfaced. Ballard was accused of using his undercover work to pressure women into sexual relations. Eventually an internal investigation found that Ballard had violated “OUR’s policies and values.” As I write this, civil lawsuits are outstanding and Ballard may face criminal charges in California and in Utah.

The preponderance of the evidence clearly points to something being off with Ballard. At best, he appears to be something of a con man. At worst he’s a criminal. But how much of that matters in terms of this film especially if the on-screen Ballard is, as critics claim, highly fictionalized?

That children are exploited sexually, both in America (particularly Hollywood?) and around the world is well established. This is undoubtedly a stain on modern civilization. In that context, doesn’t a fictional portrayal of something that we, as a society, must confront become valuable? Isn’t that especially so when the abuse being portrayed ends up obscured behind endless lawsuits, prosecutions, and the occasional suicide.

I’ve spoken before about the quality of a film deriving from its importance rather than simply its entertainment value. Clearly this is what drove people to the theaters to make Sound of Freedom an unlikely hit. It was an unconventional hit, to be sure, and its value may be similarly unconventional. I would suggest that what, just maybe, makes this one important may be the pushback against it. Sound of Freedom became a vehicle for protest; a way for the audience member to object to the way they’ve been manipulated.

And, again… it wasn’t that bad of a film.

– Photo by namo deet on Pexels.com
  1. Just to highlight the obvious, this was Trump’s White House. In many minds, this was overshadow any possible good that such a committee might be able to accomplish. ↩︎
  2. For those readers mercifully unaware, “QAnon” claimed to be a whistleblower highly placed within the U.S. intelligence apparatus. He released information revealing the supposed secret activities of the government. One of the early accusations was that highly-ranked Democrats were trafficking in children for sexual abuse – an activity that involved a Washington DC pizza shop. Ballard, from what I can glean, is accused of courting the followers of “Pizzagate” and other similarly-sourced theories. ↩︎