(OPINION) What happens when another overtly Christian movie starring Jim Caviezel dominates the box office? After the thriller “Sound of Freedom” beat out Disney’s “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” for the top spot over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, the mainstream media didn’t waste much time piling on the hate.
Shown in only 2,600 theaters, the Angel Studios film is based on the life of Tim Ballard, a former U.S. Department of Homeland Security agent who left his job because he wanted to do more to rescue children from modern-day slavery.
With a bold message calling for the freedom of millions of children enslaved in human trafficking, the film’s signature line declares, “God’s children are not for sale.”
While some industry outlets like Variety hailed the true-life tale about child sex trafficking as an “unlikely box office savior,” after the film took in $40 million less than a week after its debut, some fans noticed a marked contrast in the way in which other media covered the film’s success.
Calling the movie a “QAnon-adjacent thriller” — whatever that means — The Guardian “fact-checked” the box office tally, pointing out that “Indiana Jones” had already been in theaters for five days before “Sound of Freedom” came out.
From there, reviewer Charles Bramesco tosses out what can only be described as a list of what must be the mainstream media’s holy trinity of “alt-right” buzzwords: Clinton Crime Family, adrenochrome, Pizzagate.
Bramesco even takes a swipe at Christian “archetypes” when he writes the film’s “religious dimension seldom extends beyond a God-fearing undertone, most perceptible in archetypes like the reformed sinner on the righteous path.”
According to the Christian Post, The writer seems to mock the pro-life movement when he suggests the film “pretends to be a real movie, like a ‘pregnancy crisis center’ masquerading as a bona fide health clinic.”
Perhaps most ironically, though, is right after The Guardian reviewer takes Caviezel to task for daring to help raise additional funds to fight child trafficking, calling it the “the lone honest beat in a purported exposé of scandalizing facts,” a footer at the bottom of the review reads:
“I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I was hoping you would consider taking the step of supporting the Guardian’s journalism.” Lone honest beat, indeed.
The review stands in stark contrast, however, to The Guardian’s news coverage of Colombian child sex trafficking in 2018, when the outlet warned the practice is “rife” in Cartegna, one of the country’s biggest tourist destinations.
The Washington Post and Rolling Stone were also taken to task by conservatives on social media who pointed out their respective glowing coverage of the 2020 film “Cuties,” which tells the tale of an 11-year-old girl rebelling against her conservative family to join a dance crew that engages in sexually-suggestive dance routines.
The film’s writer and director, Maïmouna Doucouré, told Medium that they “auditioned 700 girls” for the film. Questions have been raised about the audition tapes and what the filmmakers asked each girl to do during the audition.
After thousands signed a petition calling on Netflix to remove “Cuties” from its platform over what critics described as the sexualization of young children, Netflix was later indicted in Texas in connection with the film for promoting “lewd” depictions of children.
That movie was hailed by The Washington Post and Rolling Stone, both of which also mocked “Sound of Freedom.” The Post also linked the movie to “QAnon conspiracy theorists,” in stark contrast to its own review of “Cuties” as an “unflinching look at what it means to be a preteen girl.”
