SOUND OF FREEDOM

SOUND OF FREEDOM

The horrors of modern-day child trafficking are brought to life in this flawed, but highly recommended thriller.

RUNNING TIME: 2 hours, 10 minutes

RATING: 3 stars

Sound of Freedom, one of the year's surprise box-office hits, is a bland, so-so, but ultimately valid thriller about child trafficking that manages, despite routine direction and screenplay (both by Alejandro Gomez Monteverdi), and competent though unexceptional performances, to work its way into your heart because of its powerful subject matter.

The facts are real, the issues vital, and the kidnapping of children for child pornography is a monumental horror that never fails to strike a chord in the hearts of people everywhere. If the pacing in this film lacks momentum, and the action has a low-budget feel that robs it of a badly needed urgency, it's still a movie well deserving of serious attention and well worth seeing.

Tim Ballard (Jim Caviezel) is a federal agent for the Department of Homeland Security who rescues a young boy from child traffickers and then discovers he has a sister who is still being held in captivity and prepared for life as a sex slave. Ballard has been stalking child traffickers for 12 years and has already arrested 280 pedophiles, but as a father of six, something about these siblings hits a personal patriarchal nerve.

So, he quits his job and turns vigilante to head for the jungles of Colombia to rescue the imprisoned child. The film focuses on Tim's dangerous journey, with a sleazy partner called Vampiro (Bill Camp), an American expatriate who served time in prison for laundering money for the Colombian drug cartels.

The trail leads into the heart of darkness, shifting occasionally to the little girl's perspective, but it mercifully avoids too many details about the child's suffering and terror. Nor does it turn into a bloody action thriller to keep the audience interested and awake. (In truth, it could use a few more shock effects, if you ask me.)

A colorful cast of characters that includes a beauty queen who lures children into prostitution by inviting them to her apartment for talent show "auditions" provides insight into the kind of seemingly "nice" and "normal" people in the trafficking underworld for profit. But the centerpiece attraction is Caviezel, who rose to stardom playing Jesus in Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ , as a convincing Tim Ballard. He engages you with insight into a tough guy's heart, mind, and soul. You can feel his compassion and courage while he simultaneously struggles with emotional guilt for leaving his wife behind (a wasted Mira Sorvino).

The villains who prey on innocent children and elude the law are disappointingly stereotypical and the end result provides little in the way of instructing us about the ways we can take action to save our children from predators. Still, Sound of Freedom is an important subject mainstream Hollywood has mostly ignored.

A statement in the closing credits states that child sex trafficking has becoming the fastest growing criminal network throughout the world; there are more people enslaved now, by traffickers, than there were in the days when slavery was rampant. Overlooking its flaws, this is a film of hair-raising revelations, highly recommended.