---
title: "Sound of Freedom"
year: 2023
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/sound-of-freedom"
fi1m_id: "sound-of-freedom"
imdb_id: "tt7599146"
tmdb_id: 678512
wikidata_id: "Q85847274"
fi1m_score: 47
critics_score: 51
critics_reviews: 6
published: "2026-09-24T22:55:37.577349+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-24T22:55:51.976518+00:00"
region: "NL"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Sound of Freedom (2023)

Directed by Alejandro Monteverde · 2h 11m · Kijkwijzer 12 · Action, Drama

## Identity

Sound of Freedom

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/sound-of-freedom
- **Type:** Film
- **Fi1m ID:** sound-of-freedom
- **IMDb ID:** tt7599146
- **TMDB ID:** 678512
- **Wikidata ID:** Q85847274
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7599146/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/678512, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q85847274

**Fi1m score: 47** · Critics 51 from 6 reviews

*In a sentence:* A film that hunts child traffickers with a whisper and a choir, and is very sure you already agree with it

> Alejandro Monteverde has made a sincere, carefully built thriller about a real horror and cannot stop telling us how to feel about it. Bill Camp and a well-shot Cartagena are the reasons to stay; Jim Caviezel’s whisper is the reason you may not.

## Synopsis

Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Roberto (José Zúñiga), a father raising a daughter and a younger son, is approached by Giselle (Yessica Borroto Perryman), a smiling woman who says she runs a modelling agency and that his children have the faces for it. He leaves them at an audition in a rented room and comes back at the agreed hour to find the door locked and nobody inside. In Calexico, California, Homeland Security agent Tim Ballard (Jim Caviezel) has spent years arresting men who trade pictures of children and has never once found the child in the pictures. His wife Katherine (Mira Sorvino) tells him to go and look. The search takes him across the Mexican border and then to Cartagena, Colombia, where a former cartel accountant known as Vampiro (Bill Camp) now buys children back from the people who sell them.

## Review

Alejandro Monteverde’s film is about the trade in children, and it has decided that the way to be serious about that is to be solemn about everything else. Monteverde and Rod Barr’s script follows Tim Ballard (Jim Caviezel), a Homeland Security agent, from a desk in Calexico to the streets of Cartagena and eventually into the jungle. It runs 131 minutes and carries a 15 certificate, and it is more careful about what it shows than the subject might lead you to fear. Nobody could accuse it of exploiting the children. The trouble is what it does instead.

The first twenty minutes are the best in it. In Tegucigalpa a father, Roberto (José Zúñiga), takes his daughter and small son to a photo shoot run by a smiling woman called Giselle (Yessica Borroto Perryman), who poses the children against a white sheet and tells the parents to collect them at seven. He comes back to a locked door and a room with nothing in it. Monteverde plays this quietly, with nobody raising a voice, and we were frightened in the plain way a parent is frightened, by an empty chair. It is the one passage in which the film trusts us to feel something without help.

Then Caviezel arrives, and the whispering begins. He plays Ballard with wet eyes and a bowed head, every line delivered as though it were the last thing a dying man would want said. The performance has one setting. When he tells a superior that “God’s children are not for sale”, the line is meant as a creed and lands as a slogan, and the script hands him a dozen more like it. Kurt Fuller, as his boss John Bryant, has the thankless job of saying no to a saint. Mira Sorvino, as Katherine Ballard, is given a kitchen, a telephone and permission to look worried.

Bill Camp saves the middle hour. His Vampiro is a former cartel accountant who now buys children out of the trade, and Camp plays him loose and profane, a man who talks too much because he has seen too much. He gets one long speech about the night he understood what he had been paying for, delivers it flat and looking away, and it is the only speech in the film we believed. Gorka Gómez Andreu shoots his Cartagena in hot yellow light, colonial balconies and harbour glare, and for a stretch the film is a proper undercover thriller, with Eduardo Verástegui’s Pablo playing the rich man and Camp doing the talking.

What the film will not show is the abuse, and that restraint is right. What it puts in the gap is reaction shots. Brian Scofield’s editing returns again and again to Caviezel’s face as he takes in a photograph or a doorway, and Javier Navarrete’s score arrives each time with strings and a choir to tell us what the face means. Carlos Lagunas’s production design and Juliana Poveda’s costumes do quiet, accurate work, and the film around them keeps stopping to underline.

The last act goes up river into rebel-held jungle, and we will not describe it, except to say that the pursuit is staged in a flat, tidy way that a thriller about this subject cannot afford. The danger is announced rather than felt. Gerardo Taracena’s El Alacrán is a real presence for a scene or two and is then used as a door for Ballard to walk through. By this point we were no longer frightened, only impatient, and impatient is the wrong thing to feel in a film about a stolen child.

The film ends with a direct appeal we will not describe. We understand why it is there. We also felt handled by it, and we had felt handled for most of the two hours before it. Whether the events happened as shown is a matter for reporters rather than for us. We can only say that the film assumes its good intentions will do the work, and they do not.

Monteverde’s *Bella* was a small, gentle film about people watching one another. This one is larger and never lets anyone watch for long before telling them what to think. See it for the opening in Honduras and for Camp, who deserves a better film and behaves as if he were in one. Most critics split down the middle on it, and we come down just below the line.

*Fi1m score 47, published 24 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

The reviews split down the middle on this one, and the split is not a polite disagreement about degree. Those who like it call it a suspenseful, conventional thriller with a serious message, praising the grounded staging of the rescue mission and Jim Caviezel’s restrained, steely lead performance. Empire singles out Bill Camp as the most enjoyable presence in the film. Nearly everyone accepts that the subject is grave and the intentions sincere.

Sincerity is where the agreement stops. The dissenters find the film dull, limp and bland, with solemn performances and a script built from platitudes, and The Guardian calls Caviezel wooden rather than restrained. Even the sympathetic notices carry reservations about heavy-handed piety, and Empire says a manipulative mid-credits scene undercuts the whole. The spread is wide: two reviews land comfortably in favour, three well against, with little middle ground. One further review could not be read in full.

## Straight answers

**Is Sound of Freedom worth watching?**

*Sound of Freedom* is a sincere, carefully made thriller about child trafficking that keeps telling us how to feel, and we scored it 47. The opening in Honduras and Bill Camp's turn as a former cartel accountant are the reasons to stay; Jim Caviezel's whispered, one-note performance and Javier Navarrete's insistent choir are the reasons many will not.

**How long is Sound of Freedom, and what is it rated?**

*Sound of Freedom* runs 2h 11m and is rated 12 by the Kijkwijzer in the Netherlands. It is an action and drama film.

**Where can I watch Sound of Freedom in the Netherlands?**

*Sound of Freedom* is streaming on Amazon Prime Video in the Netherlands, and it is also available to rent from Amazon Prime Video from €2.99. Availability is checked daily; the links above go straight to each service.

**How violent or frightening is Sound of Freedom, and is it suitable for children?**

*Sound of Freedom* carries a 15 certificate in the UK and never shows the abuse of children, though the subject is present in every scene. The early abduction in Tegucigalpa is quietly frightening in the way an empty room is frightening, and the later jungle pursuit is tidy rather than brutal. It is not for children; older teenagers who understand what it is about should manage.

**How does Sound of Freedom compare to Sicario?**

*Sound of Freedom* and [*Sicario*](https://film.one/film/sicario) are both border thrillers about agents pulled into the trade in human misery, and *Sicario* is the better film by a clear margin. Denis Villeneuve builds dread through silence and an agent kept uninformed, where Alejandro Monteverde stops to underline with strings and reaction shots. Choose *Sicario* for tension, *Sound of Freedom* only if its subject is the draw.

**What should I watch after Sound of Freedom?**

After *Sound of Freedom*, try [*Sicario*](https://film.one/film/sicario) (2015, Fi1m 80): The border thriller done with dread and silence rather than sermons. Then [*Spotlight*](https://film.one/film/spotlight) (2015, Fi1m 85): Child abuse investigated by people who type, phone and never once whisper; and [*Prisoners*](https://film.one/film/prisoners) (2013, Fi1m 81): Two missing girls, one furious father, and a film that earns every minute of its dread.

### Reviews we read (6)

- **Empire**, Kevin E.G. Perry (70/100, inferred): The review finds it a suspenseful, conventional thriller with a serious message, though its impact is weakened by a manipulative mid-credits scene. It praises Jim Caviezel’s steely performance and singles out Bill Camp as the film’s most enjoyable performer. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/sound-of-freedom/)
- **Variety**, Owen Gleiberman (70/100, inferred): Gleiberman finds the film a compelling, urgent thriller despite its occasionally heavy-handed religious piety. He praises Jim Caviezel’s committed, restrained performance and the grounded staging of the rescue mission. [Read](https://variety.com/2023/film/reviews/sound-of-freedom-review-jim-caviezel-1235660035/)
- **The New York Times** (64/100, inferred): The page appears to be a review of the specified film, but its verdict and critical focus are unavailable. The article could not be read, so no praise or complaint can be identified. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/12/movies/sound-of-freedom-review.html)
- **Radio Times**, James Mottram (2/5): Mottram calls the film earnest but misjudged. He notes that its jungle pursuit contains only a modest amount of violence. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-tv405b/sound-of-freedom)
- **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (30/100, inferred): Bradshaw finds the film dull, odd and uncertainly acted, despite its serious subject. He singles out Caviezel’s wooden performance and the film’s opaque intentions as shortcomings. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/aug/30/sound-of-freedom-review-anti-child-trafficking-thriller-that-plays-to-the-qanon-crowd)
- **The i Paper**, Francesca Steele (30/100, inferred): The critic finds the film limp, bland and emotionally manipulative despite its extraordinary subject matter. She singles out its solemn performances and script full of platitudes as reasons it never reaches for anything greater. [Read](https://inews.co.uk/culture/film/sound-of-freedom-review-donald-trump-favourite-film-limp-manipulative-2580207)

## Details

- **Director:** Alejandro Monteverde
- **Director:** Alejandro Monteverde
- **Writer:** Rod Barr, Alejandro Monteverde
- **Cinematography:** Gorka Gómez Andreu
- **Editor:** Brian Scofield
- **Music:** Javier Navarrete
- **Production design:** Carlos Lagunas
- **Costume design:** Juliana Poveda
- **Producer:** Lukas Behnken, Eduardo Verástegui
- **Cast:** Jim Caviezel as Tim Ballard; Mira Sorvino as Katherine Ballard; Bill Camp as Vampiro; Gerardo Taracena as El Alacrán; Kurt Fuller as John Bryant; José Zúñiga as Roberto; Eduardo Verástegui as Pablo; Scott Haze as Chris
- **Runtime:** 2h 11m
- **Certificate (Kijkwijzer):** 12
- **Release (the Netherlands):** 26 October 2023
- **Genres:** Action, Drama
- **Budget:** $14 million
- **Box office:** $251 million
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwSBQWI-bek

## Where to watch in the Netherlands

- Amazon Prime Video: streaming, uhd
- Amazon Prime Video: rent €2.99, sd
- Amazon Prime Video: buy €7.99, sd

*Checked 2026-09-24.*

Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BE, BR, CA, CL, CO, DE, DK, ES, FI, FR, GB, IN, JP, KR, MX, NL, NO, NZ, PA, SE, US, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *Lilya 4-ever* (2002): Lukas Moodysson’s Swedish film tells the trafficking story from the child’s side, without comfort
- *The Whistleblower* (2010): Rachel Weisz as a peacekeeper who finds the traffickers are her own colleagues
- *Sicario* (2015), Fi1m 80: The border thriller done with dread and silence rather than sermons — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/sicario.md)
- *Spotlight* (2015), Fi1m 85: Child abuse investigated by people who type, phone and never once whisper — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/spotlight.md)
- *Prisoners* (2013), Fi1m 81: Two missing girls, one furious father, and a film that earns every minute of its dread — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/prisoners.md)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/sound-of-freedom