Sound of Freedom is the unexpected sleeper hit of the summer, but the Tim Ballard biopic has caused major controversy for a range of reasons.
Sound of Freedom has become a huge box office hit, yet the action movie is also extremely controversial due to its real-life inspiration. Sound of Freedom sees The Passion of the Christ star Jim Caviezel portray Tim Ballard, the founder and CEO of Operation Underground Railroad. Ballard is an anti-human-trafficking activist who, along with Operation Underground Railroad, has claimed credit for rescuing thousands of human trafficking victims. Sound of Freedom depicts Ballard traveling to Colombia to rescue children from sex trafficking. Despite its intense subject matter, Sound of Freedom has proven to be very popular in its theatrical release.
With an opening weekend gross of over $40 million, Sound of Freedom’s box office success is undeniably impressive. However, the movie has also courted a lot of controversy since its release. Sound of Freedom’s creators have been linked to the far-right conspiracy theory , while Ballard has been the subject of numerous critical investigations. The veracity of Operation Underground Railroad and Ballard’s claims have been called into question while his personal story has been accused of hagiography. More seriously, Operation Underground Railroad was the subject of an investigation by the Davis County Attorney’s Office.
STOP NOW! WHOIS QANON
Tim Ballard’s group Operation Underground Railroad was the subject of a Vice investigation entitled “A Famed Anti-Sex Trafficking Group Has a Problem With the Truth” in December 2020, after Sound of Freedom was completed but before the movie was released. Sound of Freedom changed Ballard’s story, but even his original accounts have been accused of muddying details and bending the truth. According to journalist Anna Merlan, an extensive investigation into Operation Underground Railroad and Ballard uncovered a “pattern of image-burnishing and mythology-building, a series of exaggerations that are, in the aggregate, quite misleading.” Among the concerns listed in Merlan’s article are exaggerated claims and unclear accounts of human trafficking.
Merlan’s article states that Ballard’s claims about Operation Underground Railroad have been, at best, misleading. Merlan also notes that Operation Underground Railroad has not been transparent about how the organization spends its millions. Most damningly, Merlan’s article recounts the story of Liliana, a real-life trafficking victim whose story Ballard repeatedly embellished and rewrote. Ballard heavily implied he was involved in Liliana’s rescue when, in reality, she escaped on her own. Similarly, Ballard frequently changed Liliana’s age while recounting her story and falsely claimed she was kidnapped when the truth was her abuser gained her trust. A director of another anti-human-trafficking program, Safe Horizon, had serious concerns with Ballard’s claims.
Sound Of Freedom Has Been Linked To QAnon Conspiracy Theorists – What’s Been Said
Outside of questions surrounding Ballard’s claims and the work of Operation Underground Railroad, Sound of Freedom has also courted controversy thanks to its links to the QAnon conspiracy theory. Angel Studios CEO Neal Harmon argued that Sound of Freedom “is not about conspiracy theories” and “it’s not about politics,” but Sound of Freedom’s success Sound Of Freedom’ Is a Superhero Movie for Dads With Brainworms
Sound Of Freedom’ Is a Superhero Movie for Dads With Brainworms
“BASED ON A true story,” I heard from somewhere across the theater.
The familiar words had appeared on screen, and an elderly man had taken it upon himself to read them aloud, to the rest of a sizable audience seated for a matinee showing of the anti-child-trafficking thriller Sound of Freedom, starring Jim Caviezel. For the seasoned moviegoer, this phrase is a joke — we know that cinema will stretch almost any “truth” to the breaking point — and the rank insincerity of such a pronouncement is the foundation of the prankish opening titles of Fargo. But this crowd, I could tell, would view the events depicted over the next two-plus hours as entirely literal.
Caviezel, best known for being tortured to death in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, has become a prominent figure on the conspiracist right, giving speeches and interviews in which he hints at an underground holy war between patriots and a sinister legion of evildoers who are harvesting the blood of children. It’s straight-up QAnon stuff, right down to his use of catchphrases like “The storm is upon us.” Here, he gets to act out some of that drama by playing a fictionalized version of Tim Ballard, head of the anti-sex trafficking nonprofit Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.), in a feature film that casts the operator as a Batman-style savior for kids sold into the sex trade.
RollingStone’s Miles Klee to note that star Jim Caviezel has historically been outspoken in his promotion of QAnon conspiracy theories. Klee noted that Caviezel has repeated the most “grotesque falsehoods of the sprawling QAnon ideology,” with the actor stating that Ballard was involved in saving children from adrenochrome harvesting.
As famously mentioned in Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange and Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, adrenochrome is a real-life chemical compound. The substance is also the subject of a canard commonly found in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. According to right-wing conspiracy theorists, adrenochrome harvesting is a practice wherein children are tortured to extract this supposedly life-lengthening substance. Caviezel repeated this baseless claim during a July 11 edition of The Charlie Kirk Show. The star of Sound of Freedom’s claims about adrenochrome harvesting has drawn criticism, as have the public personas of Sound of Freedom’s high-profile celebrity supporters.
Mel Gibson and Elon Musk are among the celebrities who have publicly supported Sound of Freedom, which doesn’t help the movie’s standing among those critical of far-right ideologues. Elon Musk recently supported Justin Roiland when allegations of domestic violence surfaced against the Rick and Morty star, while Mel Gibson’s many controversies make his endorsement of Sound of Freedom problematic. Gibson has a long history of making racist, homophobic, misogynistic, and anti-Semitic comments, which has led commentators to call his support of Sound of Freedom a telling endorsement of the movie’s politics.
Anna Merlan’s continued investigations of Tim Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad for Vice alleged that the group failed to identify human trafficking victims during their raids, ignored victim privacy, allowed celebrities and donors to partake in raids, and failed to surveil targeted criminals. Meanwhile, Sound of Freedom’s version of Ballard’s story diverged from his retelling, which according to Merlan already diverged from the truth. Finally, Ballard is accused of using Operation Underground Railroad to push right-wing political aims and conspiracies despite claiming his work is apolitical. As such, it is no surprise that Sound of Freedom is a controversial sleeper hit, and the movie’s divisive supporters haven’t helped.
