There aren't many industry insiders who could have predicted the massive success of the sleeper hit film, Sound of Freedom. However, a large part of that success was likely steeped in that very fact, underscored by Hollywood's rejection of films like it, and what they reputedly stand for. Its very existence saw the film mired in controversy from its inception. Once the idea and premise behind it were laid bare, it was shunned by the mainstream and soon labeled a project that was nothing more than a right-wing propagandist film.
This label sounded like the death knell for any chance of the film receiving an objective look from Hollywood, which is well-known for having an overtly liberal bias, the film found some very inventive ways to come to fruition. Utilizing a pay-it-forward crowdfunding scheme, and leveraging its faith-based themes, the film bucked its politicization and went on to raise a large amount of funding — on its way to becoming the most successful indie film in history.
Telling an incredible true story, the film is full of great quotes that capture its grounding in faith and the horrors of the sensitive, but immensely important cause it champions. With this in mind, these are the best quotes from Sound of Freedom.
10 "God's children are not for sale." - Tim Ballard
Sound of Freedom stars Jim Caviezal, a once popular star, whose talent as an actor cannot be denied no matter how much he's stigmatized for his political views. He plays Tim Ballard, a federal agent who rescues a young boy from human trafficking, only to learn that the child's sister is still being held captive. Seeing it as his mission, Ballard later quits his job and embarks on a perilous mission to rescue her and other victims of child sex slavery and human trafficking.
Usually a bipartisan topic that unites people of all political beliefs, the film's decidedly faith-leaning narrative has made it popular with conservative audiences. Of course, this fact simultaneously also caused it to have the opposite effect on liberal ones who chalked off the film as being a mouthpiece for conservative viewpoints. This underpinning element of faith in the film is evident in many of the lines that came from it. This one, in particular, perfectly captured Tim's mission, and the underlying spiritual calling he sincerely believes it stemmed from.
9 "When God tells you what to do, you cannot hesitate." - Vampiro
In another line that demonstrates the faith-leaning narrative informing Tim's work, this one came from the character, Vampiro. Vampiro is an ex-cartel accountant who now dedicates his life to saving children from trafficking after seeing the horrors they're exposed to first-hand.
Vampiro also believes in a divine hand overseeing what they're attempting to do. He teams up with Tim and is instrumental in helping him free many children who were kidnapped, tricked, or trapped into sex slavery by Colombian cartels, affirming Tim's mission by reminding him of its significance with these words.
8 "This job tears you to pieces. And this is my one chance to put those pieces back together." - Tim Ballard
Even before he took a more personal, hands-on approach to rescue child victims of trafficking, Tim Ballard had already been exposed to the painful realities of what children around the world experience every day. As a former agent for Homeland Security, Tim previously used to track, investigate, and arrest people for possession and distribution of child pornography.
This gave him painful insight into just how ruthless and unforgiving the syndicates behind this despicable world were, and just how badly affected the child victims featured in the material are. His mission to begin saving the children themselves, rather than simply arresting the pedophiles who consumed and shared the material, gives him a way of finally feeling like he's truly making a difference.
7 "I know, I'm the sadness in her eyes. Me, I'm the darkness. And I know, the darkness has to die." - Vampiro
In another poignant line from Vampiro, this line is reflective of his dark past. As a former member of the cartel himself, he lives with the guilt and remorse of the part he too once played in this scourge facing the world. His words reflect a very deep understanding that, no matter how much good he's done since, he can never undo his past or the permanent scars it left on the victims.
6 "And that will be a nightmare that you're never going to wake up from." - Tim Ballard
This line is merely the last one from a chilling warning that Tim Ballard gives in the film. Having seen and been on the front lines of this noble, but soul-crushing mission, he knows first-hand just how grave the problem is.
He also knows that society's inaction and the ravenous appetite of the market that drives the trafficking are only going to keep growing. Far from being some fringe problem that only affects far-flung people in rural parts of the Third World, he knows that the spread and rapidity with which the problem is growing brings it far closer to every home than most people will ever know, or care to think about.
Here's the full quote to better understand the gravity of what Tim is trying to get across in this scene.
"Over two million children a year are being sucked into the deepest recesses of hell. Trust me, man, if we do nothing, their pain is going to spread and spread until some day, it's going to reach the likes of you. And that's a nightmare that you're never going to wake up from".
5 "That's up 5,000 percent from just five years ago." - Tim Ballard
If a line like the previous one isn't harrowing enough to bring the stark reality of the problem to the fore, Tim lays out some hard, inescapable facts with this line. What makes it that much more frightening is what he's referring to.
Before this line, he mentions that there are 22 million new images of child porn on the internet. This is the 5,000% spike he's referring to, which is a nightmarish thought when you consider that every one of those images is linked to a real child somewhere who was, or is currently still trapped in the situation that gave rise to the material.
4 "Okay, so you quit your job and you go and rescue those kids." - Katherine Ballard
This line came from an unsung hero of the film. While it is of course Tim Ballard who gained all the recognition from his heroic mission and all the good he managed to accomplish from it, it should be remembered that it came at great personal risk and sacrifice to his personal life.
Chief among those sacrifices was the fact that he had a family himself. While his mission was certainly noble, his wife Katherine Ballard could have been forgiven if she tried to stand in his way given the grave risk to his life he was undertaking with the mission. Instead, Katherine Ballard, who was played wonderfully by Mira Sorvino in the film, stood by him and supported his mission because, like him, she could not stand to sit idly by knowing what those children were going through.
3 "You know trafficking exists, you've heard of it, but you don't want to look." - Tim Ballard
With one of the many lines Tim uses to expose why the problem of child trafficking for sex slavery exists, this one acts as a scathing indictment of society's ambivalence. It strikes at the heart of a very real problem, given the highly sensitive and upsetting nature of the issue.
Since it's almost an unfathomable thing for most people to even contemplate, it's easier for people to go on about their lives like it doesn't. However, just because most people have never been affected by it personally doesn't mean that the problem isn't very real, and getting worse year by year. In a way, this line was also an indictment for a lot of what audiences and the filmmakers believed was unwarranted criticism of the film.
To them, rather than it sparking a much-needed call to action against child trafficking, the film was attacked and maligned by many critics for its conservative underpinning, which politicized the film and obscured its core message — a move that effectively took focus of what the film tried to rally against, and instead shone a spotlight over the beliefs that brought it to life.
A prime example of this came from Rolling Stone's review of the film. It featured a harsh rebuke of the film, its stars, the filmmakers, and even the real Tim Ballard, among insults to the intelligence of the audience members who went to see it, and some very telling attacks that dismissed most aspects of the film as being nothing but a right-wing conspiracist farce.
However, it also severely diluted its message against child trafficking in the process. By suggesting that the issue was exaggerated by the film, the implication was that child trafficking doesn't deserve to be cared about as deeply as many audiences did; the review instead chose to highlight the political message it carried against conservative beliefs.
"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.
2 "You can sell a bag of cocaine once. A 5-year-old child, you can sell them 5-10 times a day, for 10 years straight." - Tim Ballard
This quote is another one that directly highlights the unimaginable truth of what child trafficking actually results in for the victims. It also shows why the problem is growing, and why it's steadily becoming more profitable for cartels to trade in children over drugs and illegal weapons.
The words expose just how dire the problem is and why it will get worse. It also highlights how the global appetite that creates the market that enables this trade to thrive is shocking but very real.
1 "Do you hear that? That's the Sound of Freedom." - Vampiro
This line comes during a triumphant moment when Tim Ballard manages to rescue a large group of children being held by traffickers. The children begin clapping and singing after being rescued, a truly joyous sound to hear from them after what they've had to experience. Vampiro says this line to Tim to highlight what it means to them and to celebrate the fact that, to those children at least, he has actually made a difference.
While the political discourses over this unique film and all its controversies rage on, the sad reality is that the kind of trafficking markets it depicts continue unabated. Unfortunately, what the controversy actually only accomplished was to take that discourse further away from an issue that ought to rightly be a bipartisan one. Regardless of political or religious beliefs, in an ideal world, one would think that it is the cause that should have gotten the most attention.
However, so far, the arguments for and against the film remain mired in attitudes of left and right, or conservative and liberal. Whether the problem is as bad as Sound of Freedom depicts, or as grossly exaggerated as some reviewers suggest, it shouldn't really matter.
After all, whether it's just a handful of children in reality suffering through such a fate, or millions of children across the globe as it likely actually is, surely to each of those children, politics doesn't matter more than what they're going through.
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