Tim Ballard sounds like someone I should trust if I want my child found. Jim Caviezel plays Tim as he's played most other roles since the heyday of playing Jesus in Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," a beatific and saintly figure in repose. Never mind that Tim is not a saint or sinner - he is a man on a mission to save "God's children" from child traffickers. "Sound of Freedom" almost sounds like a Mel Gibson movie yet Gibson might have made a ticking time bomb of a movie with urgency felt in your veins while watching it. "Sound of Freedom" is a low-key, somber affair yet somewhat indistinguishable from any movie that might play on TV on the same subject.
Caviezel's Tim works for Homeland Security as a Special Agent assigned to arresting pedophiles who make their presence known on the Internet. Tim finds and arrests many of them, but what about the kids who are kidnapped, bought and sold into sex slavery. This is a fascinating premise in a sense - can we ever find the missing kids (and adults) sold into these elaborate, profitable trafficking schemes? Since Homeland Security is not keen on finding the kids, viewed as an impossible task, Tim becomes the founder of Operation Underground Railroad, O.U.R., an anti-trafficking non-profit rescue organization. One of their first goals is to find the sister of "Teddy Bear," a recently found Mexican kid who was found at the Mexican border. There is a short bit here where one of their mission is to convince these traffickers that they can bring children to a wealthy guy's island. Later on, there is far more dangerous terrain in a remote part of the Amazon jungle in Colombia where a rebel enclave exists and Teddy Bear's sister is possibly being held there.
I can hardly dismiss "Sound of Freedom" and the movie does have an understated power in its best moments, especially seeing one older man carrying a drink as he's ready to take advantage of that little girl, closing the red blinds as we know what unspeakable act is about to take place. Yet the movie plays it so low-key, the outrage is so muted and so softly rendered that you only feel a modicum of anger when you hear Mexican songs sung by child-like voices. "Sound of Freedom" never gives you a rush of adrenaline or intensity with regards to such disturbing subject matter. It assumes Tim's righteousness is enough, or least the tears on Jim Caviezel's beatific face.
