The depths of the wickedness of human sin are never more apparent than in the horrors of human trafficking. Thousands of children are caught in the web of sex trafficking and slavery annually. It’s a $150 billion industry worldwide.
It’s also the focus of actor Jim Caviezel’s new movie, “The Sound of Freedom,” released in theatres on July 4th. He told Fox’s Lighthouse Faith podcast, “I was thinking about my own children.” The movie serves as a reminder that freedom is a hard-fought victory. America won its freedom through the Revolutionary War. Sadly, it didn’t end the evil of exploiting the poor, needy, or innocent for gain in America or the world.
In “The Sound of Freedom,” Caviezel plays federal agent Tim Ballard, who quit his job to save children from human traffickers. It’s an action-packed film with heart, but for Caviezel, it is personal. He said, “My wife and I adopted three children from China. And I was well aware of the problems and dangers that children face globally.”
Caviezel is a devout Christian best known for playing Jesus in Mel Gibson’s movie “Passion of the Christ.” He said this new movie exposes the spiritual evil that all people can unknowingly be complicit in by doing nothing. Caviezel said, “You have good, and you have evil. It’s always been this way. But then you have the group in the middle that are riding the fence. The devil owns the fence.”
He said last year, 85,000 children went missing. On April 26th, a whistleblower gave testimony to Homeland Security, discussing what was happening in the world of human trafficking. And yet, Caviezel said, “The next day in the media, it’s as if they didn’t want this story to get out there.”
Caviezel said, “300,000 children under 18 were lured into the sex trafficking business in the United States. We are the biggest consumers of child trafficking and pornography in the world. The United States — the home of the free, land of the brave. This is ridiculous. And so the film is a threat.”
Caviezel worked closely with Ballard to learn how agents go after traffickers, but Ballard explained how one encounter with one boy became a game changer. Caviezel said, “He’s met with an opportunity when he takes on the worst pedophile trafficker they’d ever seen. And he saves this little boy. And the five-year-old boy says, ‘Will you save my sister?’ So, Ballard goes home and talks to his wife. She sends him out, and he tries to find this little girl. [That’s] the basis of the film’s story.”
Like all the movies he chooses to work on, Caviezel said this movie must have some redemptive quality. That can be a struggle for actors, as Hollywood constantly pumps out products of the opposite nature. Still, the man who portrayed Jesus on the silver screen, and will again as he teams up with Gibson to make a movie about the resurrection of Jesus, said, “It doesn’t mean I’m going to play the good guy, but that the audience comes away with something that challenges them. As I’ve said before, I don’t go to the devil to play the devil. I go to God to tell me who the devil is.”