“God’s children are not for sale.”

Sure, The Sound of Freedom was distributed by a Christian film studio and its heroic protagonist is driven by his Christian convictions,¹ but you don’t need to hold any particularly strong religious views to agree with the film’s message, which is that child sex trafficking is a grave evil. In fact, unless you’re thoroughly wicked, you should find yourself nodding along as Jim Caviezel—playing former special agent turned author and activist Tim Ballard—quotes gross statistics and makes earnest pleas in his quest to rescue a young Honduran girl (Cristal Aparicio) from the clutches of a Colombian sex-trafficking ring.

While the message is almost distractingly prominent—and underlined by a heartfelt post-credits monologue from Caviezel that suggests the film might have a similar impact to Uncle Tom’s Cabin—it’s rarely heavy-handed, and director Alejandro Monteverde ably clears the bar in terms of craft. His tasteful use of pulsing music (Javier Navarrete), shadows, and slow-burn suspense gives the proceedings a sense of weight that the majority of other faith-based message films (not to mention run-of-the-mill thrillers) cannot claim, and his savvy use of implication allows the film to seem much heavier than its images would suggest. He knows when to linger on the build-up to horrible atrocities and when to use a cut to suggest actions off screen. A shot where we see a blurry computer screen reflected in Caviezel’s teary eye is a great bit of visual storytelling that keeps the subject in frame without stepping over the line. Much credit is due to the cast as well, which includes Bill Camp (who delivers a gut-wrenching monologue), Mira Sorvino, Eduardo Verástegui, Javier Godino, José Zúñiga, Kurt Fuller, Gary Basaraba, Gerardo Taracena, and Yessica Borroto. Less impressive is the screenplay from Rod Barr and Monteverde, which plays out with all the expected narrative beats and drastically diminishes its peripheral characters and scenarios in order to focus on the gravity of its central arc. To wit, without a postscript telling us so, we’d never know that Ballard’s wife was his inspiration because Sorvino is only on screen for about thirty seconds, and I don’t think he ever exchanges a single word with any one of his children.

Completed over five years ago with distribution planned by 21st Century Fox, the film fell into limbo when Disney acquired Fox and shelved it, giving the subsequent rollout its own built-in marketing because who would try to suppress such a film? Or maybe the Disney execs just didn’t think it would make money, a notion proved incorrect by its startling grassroots success. In any case, it’s caused quite a stir, which doesn’t really make sense to me² but has certainly been good for business. Sound of Freedom is no classic of cinema, but it’s a well executed, deeply moral film that deserves credit for complementing its message with bonafide craft.

1. It should be noted, however, that its real-life subject is actually Mormon, a religion which differs from Classic Christianity in several significant ways.

2. It seems that most detractors simply dislike Caviezel’s conspiracy-tinged politics (which are entirely absent from the film) and the Judeo-Christian ethical system in general. There are definitely legitimate criticisms to be made as far as how the film is put together—for instance, I thought the breezy tone during the child pornographer takedown and the sex hotel sting didn’t quite fit with the somber mood of the rest of the film—but in the political realm, the only gripe that holds water for me is that the film wants to have a serious impact on a real-world issue but takes many liberties in its portrayal of the sex-trafficking industry; undiscerning viewers will gobble every bit of it up as undiluted and unaltered truth, when, in fact, some artistic license was used to fit the “true story” into a two-hour film with a bravura climax.