Yonke: 'Sound of Freedom' is more than a movie, it's a call to action

“Sound of Freedom” is a movie with a big story and even bigger dreams. Lead actor Jim Caviezel says in a message shown during the closing credits he hopes the film inspires millions to rise up and fight human trafficking.

He likens it to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and how it helped to raise Americans’ awareness and consciousness to the point that slavery was abolished.

“I think we can make ‘Sound of Freedom’ the ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ of the 21st century,” Caviezel says.

Until a few weeks ago, few people had even heard of “Sound of Freedom.” It was shot on a budget of $14.6 million, according to imdb.com, and filmed mostly on location in Colombia.

Filming was completed in 2018 but it was shelved by one major studio and distribution deals to get it into theaters fell through.

Angel Studios, crowdsourcing break down distribution roadblock

“Every roadblock that you can imagine was tossed in the way,” Caviezel says in his “special announcement.”

Why did Hollywood balk at getting this movie into theaters? There are all sorts of rumors swirling around, many of them far-fetched and many reflective of the nation’s political divide.

But whoever shot it down in the past must be kicking themselves today.

Angel Studios (best known for "The Chosen") picked it up, even using crowdsourcing to bring it to more than 2,600 screens across the nation when it opened July 4.

Since then, “Sound of Freedom” has generated more than $100 million at the box office through July 19, according to boxofficemojo.com.

“Sound of Freedom” is based on a true story about a former Homeland Security agent, Tim Ballard, a real-life hero who put his life on the line to rescue hundreds of children who had been abducted and forced into slavery, many of them by sex traffickers.

Shocking story of human trafficking of two Honduran children

It is shocking story deftly told, getting the point across without getting graphic. People sitting near me were sniffling, crying, even sobbing at times as “Sound of Freedom” follows the story of two Honduran children lured to a hotel by a beautiful woman (named “Giselle,” incidentally) for a bogus acting “audition” set up by traffickers.

When the father arrives to pick up his son and daughter, the room is empty and the dozens of children who had been there with dreams of stardom and money were gone, led away to a fate of unimaginable horrors.

Caviezel, playing the role of Ballard, arrests one American perpetrator but feels compelled to do more, to rescue the children whose “audition” photos were sent to child molesters around the world. His boss bends the rules to let him go to Colombia and try to find one of the abducted children.

Ballard ends up quitting his Homeland Security job because of the limitations and becomes a vigilante on a mission.

It’s a sad, disturbing story about a real life tragedy and the darkest depths of humanity, but there is a glimmer of hope as Ballard keeps searching for the missing brother and sister.

Dark and disturbing stories are nothing new for Hollywood. How many movies are made about gangsters, serial killers and devil worshippers?

This film is extremely well done, with a strong performance by Caviezel (who played Jesus in 2004’s “The Passion of The Christ,” similarly a box office hit that at first was shunned by Hollywood moguls) and the supporting cast, with a riveting plot and authentic backdrops.

“Sound of Freedom” is not a Christian movie and was not shelved for being too preachy, as there is only one Bible reference and that was ad-libbed, Ballard said in an interview on TBN, when Caviezel tells the child molester he is about to arrest that it would be “better to have a large millstone hung around your neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” than to hurt a child, taken from Matthew 18:6. And the molester responds, “What is that supposed to mean?”

“We don’t have big studio money to market this movie,” Caviezel says in the closing message, “but we have you and the baton now has been passed to you. You are the storytellers … the most powerful person in this world is the storyteller. Together we have a chance to make these two kids and the countless children they represent the most powerful people in the world by telling their story in a way that only the cinema can do for a couple of months while ‘Sound of Freedom’ is in theaters.”

Motivation for everyday people to fight the good fight

The story has been spreading like wildfire, mostly by word of mouth and people posting on social media. The only movie selling more tickets this week was Tom Cruise's massively marketed “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Part 1," according to boxofficemojo.com

“Sound of Freedom” is more than a movie, it’s a call to action. Here’s hoping it motivates everyday people to fight the good fight and do what they can to help end the scourge of modern-day slavery and human trafficking.

David Yonke is the editor of the Mansfield News Journal, the (Fremont) News-Messenger, the Port Clinton News Herald, and the Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum. You can reach him at dyonke@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Yonke: 'Sound of Freedom' is not just a movie, it's a call to action