Child sex slavery is real.

[OneBlueDotS-Carolina]

14. Sound of Qfreedom

Again, many are amazed by Sound of Freedom as an indie film from an indie distributor breaking through at the box office. Ticket sales have been fueled by right-wing groups, and Angel Studios has stoked its faith-based core base. All of this is reminiscent of American Sniper, but on an indie level.

Monday’s win here for Sound of Freedom creates optimism over its potential second-weekend hold. The pic’s first day was clearly front-loaded with over $14M including previews and crowdfunded cash, with a 72% drop on its day 2 Wednesday with $4M.

https://deadline.com/2023/07/box-office-sound-of-freedom-jim-caviezel-insidious-red-door-monday-1235434531/

‘Sound Of Freedom’ Is a Superhero Movie for Dads With Brainworms
The QAnon-tinged thriller about child-trafficking is designed to appeal to the conscience of a conspiracy-addled boomer

“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.

Ballard himself has dabbled in Q-adjacent conspiracy theories, such as the Wayfair trafficking hoax, while his organization has far-right affinities and a long record of distorting its botched “raids,” which rely on bizarre tactics like asking psychics where to find victims for rescue. Ballard, Caviezel, and others of their ilk had primed the public to accept Sound of Freedom as a documentary rather than delusion by fomenting moral panic for years over this grossly exaggerated “epidemic” of child sex-trafficking, much of it funneling people into conspiracist rabbit holes and QAnon communities. In short, I was at the movies with people who were there to see their worst fears confirmed.

more...

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/sound-of-freedom-jim-caviezel-child-trafficking-qanon-movie-1234783837/