Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hello everybody, and welcome back. It is once again, me your favorite deputy of movie Deputy podcast, bringing you unique, introspective, and full interrogations of movies. And today that's going to mean a little bit more than it maybe typically would for your typical movie review. Now, the reason I'm saying that is because we're gonna be discussing a very serious movie today and a very powerful movie. The movie is actually called Sound of Freedom. And I'm sure by now you've heard something in the media about this movie. It is, I don't know how to put this other than just saying this. I was devastated by this movie, absolutely devastated. I could not find words I to even try to describe this, the journey that this movie takes you on. And then when you realize that it is based on a true story, and then when you really realize the depth of this subject, it, it just, if you <laugh>, if you have a soul, and if you believe in a God any God, uh, this is th this is the kind of movie that is so powerful, it doesn't just trying to figure out how I wanna put this.
Speaker 0 00:01:12 It doesn't just draw people in, but it changes people's lives. Now you may think, okay, it's like it's a movie. How powerful can it really be? But this one, like I said, it is based on a true story of Tim Ballard and he worked for the Department of Homeland Security. He, what he did was kind of, he would go undercover and intercept pedophiles that were selling children. When he was able to capture a fairly major player, his boss came to him and said, you know, this is a career capper. Basically, this is the best you're ever gonna do. And he's like, but what about the kids? <laugh>? A line is in the movie and it's not till later on in the movie, but it's that you can sell drugs once, but you can sell children countless times. I don't know about you, but that's not in my gut.
Speaker 0 00:02:01 <laugh> this one <laugh>, like I said, it's, it's the type of movie that you don't just go see and then you just <laugh>. I'm tripping over my own words here. It's one of those ones, like I said, it changes you and it in, in a good way, in a good way. Don't let me steer you away from this way at all. This is one that you must go see. I am actually taking this to the point of the score on Movie Deputy is I have a 10 point rating system. I will never give a zero and I absolutely will never give a 10. Up until now, the highest score I've ever given a movie, and I've been doing this for nine years, I have reviewed almost 1900 movies. I have given the score of nine, a total of six times in those nine years. So out of almost 1900 movies, only six of them have gotten a nine.
Speaker 0 00:03:02 This one, uh, I have struggled with the score for days. It's like, cuz I, I told, obviously I'm not gonna give it a 10 because there literally is no such thing as a perfect movie. But this is about as close as I've ever seen for the first time in movie deputy history. I am giving this movie a score of a 9.25 out of 10. It is the only movie as of now, and it may ever get a score higher than a nine on Movie Deputy. Now to know how strict I am and how harsh I am on movies, I hope you know how, how important that is. Now, at the same time, I'm also giving this movie a guilty rating. You may interrupt. Okay? If she's talking about how powerful this movie and how amazing this movie is, why is she giving it a guilt rating?
Speaker 0 00:03:52 It is because of the details of the subject matter, the, the details that this story goes into with the descriptions of what is happening and what is going to happen and the lives of the people involved, and just kind of how it all plays out. I mean, it is stomach churning just emotionally, and it's like, I don't think there was a dry eye in the theater. I don't think there's ever been a dry eye in the theater since this opened on July 4th. I actually saw this on July 4th, and it has taken me until now to be able to find the words and to be able to put myself to, to compose myself enough to bring this to you. And I'm like, okay, I can't wait any longer, even if I'm tripping over myself as I'm as obviously doing, I needed to bring this to you.
Speaker 0 00:04:38 Now you're, you're like, okay, so what's so special? It's like there's people out there that are apprehending child predators all the time. Yes, there are, but we don't really understand the extent of this. There is literally more children and women. Women and children are the primary focuses of illegal, I I can't use certain words around the podcast is gonna get pulled. So, of trafficking, they're the victims of trafficking. There are more slaves in trafficking today than there were slaves when slavery was legal. Mind you, this is worldwide. This is not something exclusive to the countries that we're seeing in this movie. It's not exclusive to the United States, it's not exclusive to Mexico, it's not exclusive to all these different countries. It's, I mean, this is something happening around the world. I, for one, know of some people who are two people indivi specifically. One was able to escape from this type of trafficking even years ago.
Speaker 0 00:05:46 And one whose family member was a victim of trafficking. Also, myself being a survivor of assault in this manner for as a child, and I am, I refused to call myself a victim. I call myself a survivor. It made it that much harder to watch what was happening. No, mind you, it doesn't go into overly graphic. It's not actually showing these atrocious abhorrent acts against children on the screen, but it is going into detail of what's happening to these children afterwards. And what's hap I mean, the, the process of this whole thing, and it takes you through it from the beginning. The two children that we meet in this movie, contrary to popular belief, Jim Covel and the character plays Jim Tim Ballard. They are not the stars of this movie. The stars of this movie are these children. It's brother and sister. They are truly the stars of this.
Speaker 0 00:06:45 Their dad tries to give one of them an opportunity to live a better life and just have basically a kind of like an American Idol type thing. And so he takes her and her brother to this audition and they're like, oh yeah, come back this time. Pick up your kids. Except when he went back, they were gone. By the time they were gone, they were literally gone. There was no trace, there was no way to hunt them down. There was no way to find them until Tim Ballard. Mind you, they, the justice system is broken. Broken is the nicest way I could put it because a lot of these agencies, they're like, okay, we got the, the pedophile, we got the, the predator. And they stopped looking. They, I mean, it's, to them, it's not worth going after all these children. And I don't, on a personal level, I don't understand that that's many people why this movie gets so hard.
Speaker 0 00:07:47 And <laugh>, I'm not laughing, I'm just trying to gather my thoughts enough to, to bring this story to you. There's so many powerful quotes in this movie, and like I said, the movie itself is so intensely powerful that you can't help but just be drawn into everything. And mind you, this was not a big Hollywood film. This movie was done by Angel Studios. It was made actually about five years ago. And they have hit every hurdle imaginable trying to bring this to the big screen. Hollywood, as you can imagine, did not want this to, to did not want this out here, but thankfully to a lot of the investors and everybody at Angel Studios and of course Tim Ballard, Jim Veel, and a lot of the other people involved made this happen. And the credits actually lists all of the private investors that invested in this movie to help bring it to you and to me and to everyone, it's just, like I said, if you cannot even grasp the weight of this movie.
Speaker 0 00:08:57 And so I ha it, it, even with as devastating as I sound, as emotional as I am, I recommend going to see this at the earliest possible opportunity. I say it that way because time and time again, this movie is selling out where there are no seats left. In some areas it's sold out even days, weeks in advance. And that's because the power of this movie is out there and people are sharing it. And that's what I wanna do here. I wanna share this with you. When God tells you what to do, you do not hesitate. And that's a line in the movie. Now, I'm not a particularly religious person, but that even with that, this movie got to me one of another line by this, by the character play. Um, one of the characters, I don't, I'm trying to think how to describe him without giving away a spoiler. I'll just say a powerful character in the movie, a quote that he said is, he said, I was granted a glimpse into her soul and all I saw was sadness.
Speaker 0 00:10:07 Now thank you for just a moment about the weight of that statement. And that same person says only the courageous act. And that goes back to the whole thing of, like I said, children are not their priority. Women are not their priority. I mean, but the numbers it in the credits and everything like that, it gives the numbers. And Jim Coel, it makes a statement in the credits that I'm gonna be sharing with you here shortly. And don't worry, it won't ruin anything in the movie for you as you know. No spoilers, I'm, I'm not gonna change anything with that here. But Sound of Freedom is just one of those stories that comes along once in a lifetime if you're lucky enough to experience it. And you may be wondering why is she saying that she's lucky to experience this than she sounds emotionally devastated?
Speaker 0 00:11:05 Well, it's because I am. And you know what I was, I would go again, I would go see this again. I'm actually going to, my husband hasn't seen this yet. And so when his schedule allows, he's got a crazy work schedule. We are going to get to get tickets and I'm going to sit with him and watch this movie again. And if any of my friends wanted to go see this, but they wanted to have somebody to go with him, I would go see it again, <laugh>. And it's just like I said, movies like this literally come along once in a lifetime. This is one that you need to experience. This is one that needs to be seen, it needs to be understood, addressed. And where do we go from here? I don't, I don't know. I don't know. I don't have the answers for that.
Speaker 0 00:11:58 But I am just so thankful that there are people like Tim Ballard out there who are fighting this fight. And I'm hoping that somebody else will be inspired by this. Do the same thing or multiple somebodies. I always say if a movie changes one person's life, but this is changing way more than one person's life. The story here, like I said, we aren't granted the views into the stories like this very often. I actually reviewed a, another child trafficking movie sex, uh, that trafficking movie. Like, I'm trying to be careful in my words here, but I don't, I this, like I said, this is so powerful. I don't want this to be taken down just due to some of the phrases and stuff that I use. So I just wanna be careful with using that. But it was a, it came out in I believe, 2016.
Speaker 0 00:12:52 It was called Priceless. And that's actually the next movie I'm gonna be talking about. So come be back to listen tomorrow for that. Cause that one is also one that you're not gonna wanna miss. I that one, it, it, it was powerful, don't get me wrong. It was so powerful. It was so moving and everything like that, but nothing like Sound of freedom. And I don't mean to dismiss priceless at all. I mean, that was an amazing movie, but sound of Freedom just takes it a step further. Now, as you've noticed that my review here is going quite a bit longer than normal, but there's so much I wanna share here. And I'm actually going to share now the message that Jim Zel shares in the credits. So I apologize about the audio quality. I was trying to do my best here.
Speaker 1 00:13:33 Thank you all for coming out and watching this movie. I'm guessing some of you are feeling sad, maybe overwhelmed, or even a sense of fear, which is understandable. But living in fear isn't how we solve this problem. It's living in hope. It's believing that we can make a difference because we can. But I want to make one thing clear. This movie you just watched isn't about me or Tim Ballard. It's about those kids. You know, Steve Jobs once said, the most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. Abraham Lincoln credited Harriet style when she wrote Uncle Tom's cabin. This powerful story inspired millions to rise up and fight against slavery. I think we can make sound of freedom. The uncle Tom's cabin of 21st century slavery, this film was actually made five years ago and it wasn't released till now with every roadblock that you can imagine being tossed in the way and
Speaker 0 00:14:30 The names, that's what I was talking about earlier on
Speaker 1 00:14:32 Screen took a stand and they made sure this story could be shown to all of you. And now all of you have the opportunity to continue telling this story. We don't have big studio money to market this movie, but we have you and the baton has now been passed to you. You are the storytellers that can get people to come see this film in theaters. When you come to a theater, you experience movies differently. There is no pause button, there are no distractions. We all have an experiences. We watch the film together as a community. It makes it possible for strong messages like this one, to take root sound of freedom is a hero's tale, but I'm not talking about the character I play. It's the heroic brother and sister in this film that work to save each other. They are the true heroes. The most powerful person in this world is the storyteller to together we have a chance to make these two kids and the countless children that they represent the most powerful people in the world by telling their story in a way only the cinema can do for a couple of months.
Speaker 1 00:15:41 While sound of Freedom is in theaters, these kids can be more powerful than the cartel kingpins or presidents from congressmen or even tech billionaires. We believe this movie has the power to be a huge step forward toward ending child trafficking, but it will only have that effect if millions of people see it. Now, I know it's weird because we're in a theater, but feel free to pull out your phones and scan.
Speaker 0 00:16:08 Now, the things that he is getting ready to talk about here is a QR code that goes to the website, angel.com/freedom. Now, angel Studios is doing something that has really never been done before with, with basically any studio. They are inviting people to go online and sponsor tickets because they want people to see this, that can't afford to go to the movies. And they are offering this thing so that if you wanna go see this movie and you can't afford to go see this movie, you go to angel.com/freedom and you can fill out your information and you can go see that, that they will send you an an etic. I can't talk, they will send you a ticket to see this movie. And I'm not talking just below. If you have one person, if it's a family, it doesn't matter. You can get as many tickets as you need to go see this movie because so many people are stepping up and sponsoring people.
Speaker 0 00:17:04 They're, they're paying, paying forward the tickets. So there's people, there's so many tickets that are already available for this Pay it forward movement. It's like I said, I've never heard of a studio doing something like that before. And that, like I said, don't let money be. The reason that you do not go to go see this movie, angels Angel Studios is making sure that that's not gonna be an issue for you. In, in the movie, at the end of the credits, there's a QR code to take out your phone and scan it. And he says, I know you're in a theater, but go ahead and take out your phone and scan this QR code. But I mean, I can't necessarily share the QR code in a podcast here. So I'm, we're not exactly sure how to do that. And then of course, with it being an audio recording, you can't really see the QR code either on that.
Speaker 0 00:17:48 But I'm telling you, go to angel.com/freedom. Like I said, it'll, the, the information is there. I said, don't let that be the reason that you don't go see this movie. Be the storyteller. Share the story. It's only through our actions that change can happen. Like you said, movies like this come, come along once in a lifetime and if you're lucky enough to experience it, it'll change your life. Angel Studios is making sure that nobody is going to have those roadblocks to keep them from experiencing this. I hope that this review has helped you. I hope his words have helped you, and I hope that you take a chance and see this movie <laugh>. Like I said, it's, it will change your life. It'll break your heart into a million pieces, but it's one of those movies that you'll be glad it did. As weird as that sounds. Until next time, I'll talk to you soon.
