Fans of Sound of Freedom, the true-life thriller that exposes the sinister world of child trafficking, have propelled the film to the top spot at the box office on its July 4 opening in America.
The film, distributed by Angel Studios (The Chosen), is based on the true story of former government agent Tim Ballard, played by The Passion of the Christ’s Jim Caviezel, who quit his job to rescue a little girl from sex traffickers in the jungles of Colombia and ended up saving many more children and adults.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyyyKcfJRGQ&t=3s
According to Box Office Mojo, Sound of Freedom, which earned $14,242,063 million at the box office on July 4 – with $11.5 million in direct box office sales plus $2.6 million from Pay It Forward tickets sold – beat Disney’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which earned $11,698,989.
“Thanks to fans around the country, SOUND OF FREEDOM earned the top spot as America’s number one movie on Independence Day,” said Neal Harmon, CEO of Angel Studios, in a press statement. “We’ve received numerous messages telling us theaters are either packed or sold out. This movie has now taken on a life of its own to become something more than that, a grassroots movement.”
.#SoundOfFreedom is smashing box office expectations! That’s a GREAT thing to see. Please share this tweet, the link below is where you go to find theaters near you👇 https://t.co/eMyM6nDmri
— John Rich🇺🇸 (@johnrich) July 4, 2023
At a screening of the film on June 21, U.S. Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ-04), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations, discussed his work over the last two decades in addressing human sex and labor trafficking in the United States and throughout the world.
In 2000, Smith authored the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA), “a comprehensive, whole-of-government initiative” to combat human trafficking.
“The TVPA created a bold new domestic and international anti-human trafficking strategy and established numerous new programs to Protect victims, Prosecute traffickers and to the extent possible, Prevent human trafficking in the first place—the three Ps,” Smith said, noting, however, that his legislation was met with indifference and even criticism.
“Though it is hard to believe now, my legislation was met with a wall of skepticism and opposition—dismissed by many as a solution in search of a problem,” he described. “For most people at that time—including lawmakers—the term trafficking applied almost exclusively to drugs and weapons, not human beings”:
Reports of vulnerable persons—especially women and children—being reduced to commodities for sale were often met with surprise, incredulity, or indifference. Top officials in the Clinton Administration testified on the record against major provisions of my bill at congressional hearings I chaired and said, for example, that naming and sanctioning countries with egregiously poor records on human trafficking—including and especially government complicity—would be “counterproductive.”
Despite these reactions, Smith said he did not give up.
“As a matter of fact, when my bill was stalled and languishing and presumed dead, I invited two victims of sex trafficking that my wife Marie and I had met and listened to for hours in 1999 in St. Petersburg, Russia, to tell their stories,” he explained. “Their testimony was pivotal.”
The victims courageously described “the daily rape, abuse, and horror they endured,” Smith observed.
In the end, the bill was signed into law on October 28, 2000.
“Within a year after enactment no-one was arguing anymore that the Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s integrated three P’s strategy—prevention, protection for victims and prosecution of the traffickers—was flawed, unworkable, unnecessary, or counterproductive,” Smith said.
“On May 14, 2015, Tim Ballard testified at my human rights committee,” the New Jersey congressman continued. “He told us how he had served for 12 years as a special agent for the Department of Homeland Security’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and the Sex Tourism Jump Team and worked as an undercover operative infiltrating organizations at home and abroad that were abusing and trafficking children.”
Smith added that Ballard testified he often felt “helpless by the fact that the vast majority of the child victims that we would find fell outside the purview of the United States … Unless I could tie a U.S. traveler to the case, I would not be able to rescue the children.”
Ballard then created Operation Underground Railroad, an organization that, Smith said, has now been involved in “over 4,000 operations, impacted over 7,000 lives and have been involved in over 6,500 arrests.”
“Working with the Columbians, for example, Tim pulled off one of the largest rescue operations ever—more than 120 victims, children as young as 11—in just one day,” Smith related, describing Ballard’s “heroic lifesaving work rescuing children from the extreme cruelty of sex trafficking— almost always at great physical risk to himself and his colleagues” as “the stuff of legends.”
In addition to Caviezel in the starring role of Ballard, Mira Sorvino portrays Ballard’s wife Katherine, and Bill Camp plays Vampiro – Ballard’s right-hand man, Angel Studios notes.
The film, which is rated PG-13, is produced by Eduardo Verástegui, and directed by Alejandro Monteverde.
“With an A+ CinemaScore rating, we’re the top-rated movie in America, and we’re going to see word-of-mouth spread even further going into the weekend,” Harmon said. “The world needs to see SOUND OF FREEDOM, and we know that our biggest competitive advantage—our incredible fans and investors—are going to make sure that happens.”
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Susan Berry, PhD is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected]
Photo “Sound of Freedom Movie Trailer” by Angel Studios.
