This surprise hit got a lot right but was far from 100% accurate. For this list, we’ll be looking at the fact and fiction behind summer 2023’s biggest sleeper hit.
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00:00 (dramatic music)
00:02 Welcome to WatchMojo.
00:05 And today we're examining 10 things
00:07 Sound of Freedom gets factually right and wrong.
00:10 - Sound of Freedom is based on a true story
00:12 about real life heroes saving kids.
00:15 - For this list, we're looking at the fact and fiction
00:17 behind summer 2023's biggest sleeper hit.
00:20 We'll be discussing the movie's factual accuracy
00:23 rather than the far-fetched conspiracy theories
00:25 that have been tied to the film.
00:27 Due to the heavy subject matter,
00:28 this is your mature content warning.
00:31 Have you seen Sound of Freedom?
00:33 Leave a respectful comment below.
00:35 The inciting incident, right.
00:39 - It is the fastest growing international crime network
00:42 that the world has ever seen.
00:43 - Sound of Freedom is a film
00:45 that has received praise and criticism,
00:47 especially in terms of its factual accuracy.
00:49 One of the events depicted that did reportedly take place
00:53 is the inciting one.
00:54 The film opens in Honduras,
00:56 where brother and sister Miguel and Rocio
00:58 are taken to a supposed casting call by their father.
01:01 But when their father returns to pick them up,
01:03 he finds no trace of them or the woman he left them with.
01:07 - Imagine walking into a room right now,
01:08 sneaking up to your bed.
01:10 What will we tell?
01:11 - Tim Ballard, whom the film is based on,
01:14 has admitted that this particular event
01:16 was inspired by the acts of a woman
01:17 named Kelly Ioanna Suarez,
01:19 a former beauty queen who used her reputation
01:22 to orchestrate such crimes.
01:23 - She's a major operator.
01:27 - Timoteo necklace, right.
01:29 - We're Homeland Security,
01:31 you know we can't go off rescuing Honduran kids in Colombia.
01:34 - After seeking to make a more direct impact
01:36 in saving a child,
01:37 the movie's Tim gets his first success
01:39 when he's able to intercept Miguel being transported
01:42 through the Mexico-US border.
01:44 While the name of the real-life Miguel
01:46 hasn't been disclosed,
01:47 this is how Ballard came to put him in protective custody.
01:50 Soon after in the film,
01:52 Miguel gives Tim his sister Rocio's necklace
01:55 with the name Timoteo on it.
01:56 (speaking in foreign language)
02:00 While Timoteo being Tim's name in Spanish
02:09 makes this a huge coincidence,
02:11 this is what actually happened.
02:13 Though it took Ballard's son pointing it out at home
02:15 for him to make the connection.
02:17 This proves to be a major motivator for Tim,
02:20 as it did for Ballard in real life.
02:22 - I actually told the producers
02:23 to consider not telling the story
02:25 because people won't believe it,
02:26 but the little boy gave me a necklace.
02:28 - The average victim, wrong.
02:30 - As soon as I laid down,
02:31 all I see are those kid's faces.
02:35 - One of the biggest grievances
02:37 that anti-trafficking experts have
02:39 is the movie's depiction of the average victim
02:41 of human trafficking.
02:42 In real life, about half of all victims are adult women.
02:46 Most victims are trafficked for labor.
02:49 The majority of young victims are actually teenagers.
02:52 They also find fault with the movie's portrayal
02:55 of how victims are trapped.
02:56 - So at this moment, she could be a block down the road
02:59 or she could be in Moscow, Bangkok, LA.
03:02 - Victims are more likely to already be
03:04 in vulnerable situations,
03:06 with poverty playing a key role.
03:08 In this sense, many experts find
03:10 that the film doesn't accurately convey the root causes
03:13 and champion preventative measures.
03:15 - God's children are not for sale.
03:17 - Strangers, wrong.
03:19 - God tells you what to do.
03:21 (dramatic music)
03:24 - You cannot hesitate.
03:27 - The real life Tim Ballard has stated
03:29 that the featured villains in the movie
03:30 are all drawn from criminals he's encountered in his career,
03:33 including the aforementioned Suarez.
03:35 However, another generalization the movie seems to get wrong
03:39 is the average perpetrator.
03:41 Early in the film, we see a chilling montage of people
03:44 absconding with seemingly random youths.
03:46 Experts have also called this out for being inaccurate.
03:49 As victims are more likely to know
03:51 their aggressors than not.
03:53 - So, she's gone.
03:54 - Often, perpetrators are locals,
03:57 friends or even family members,
03:59 many of whom offer false promises.
04:01 So again, you have another instance of the film
04:04 supposedly not addressing the systemic issue at play.
04:08 Vampiro, right.
04:10 - Kept your mouth shut, did your time.
04:12 Could have picked up where you left off.
04:14 Bought yourself a condo on the beach.
04:18 Instead you're doing this.
04:20 Why?
04:22 - About halfway through the film,
04:23 Tim meets a man in Columbia known as Vampiro,
04:26 played by Bill Camp.
04:27 A well-off individual who's taken to using his resources
04:31 to fight the system from the inside.
04:33 Sometime later, we learn Vampiro had his revelation
04:36 after an encounter with someone far too young.
04:39 - I noticed her foot.
04:40 She's got these little pink cat faces.
04:46 Painted on her toenails.
04:47 And it hit me.
04:50 She's not 25.
04:53 - Reportedly, Vampiro was a real life player
04:56 in Ballard's operation, who also went by Batman.
04:59 However, his backstory was embellished.
05:02 Not only did the real Vampiro
05:03 not go to prison earlier in life,
05:05 but the trafficked individual he dealt with
05:08 was a full grown adult who instead had a daughter
05:10 who was in much the same situation.
05:12 - All of a sudden I'm here.
05:14 I'm hit by this tidal wave.
05:15 This tsunami of darkness.
05:19 And I know I'm the sadness in her eyes.
05:23 Me, I'm the darkness.
05:26 - Tim resigns, right.
05:28 - It's over, Tim.
05:29 Close up.
05:31 Get on the plane and come back home.
05:36 - Through much of the film,
05:38 Tim has difficulty getting backing
05:39 from his homeland security in Baltimore.
05:42 He's not the only one who has trouble getting backing
05:44 from his homeland security investigations overseers.
05:47 Instead of returning to the US,
05:49 he's compelled to continue his search for Rocio
05:52 and thus resigns his position.
05:53 - No budget for this, no jurisdiction.
05:56 And I'm looking at the Colombians who I promised,
05:59 and they're like, "You can't just leave.
06:01 "This won't happen if you just leave."
06:02 - In real life, Ballard was conducting a joint operation
06:05 in both Colombia and Haiti at the time,
06:08 and was much less confident about his decision.
06:10 He was a bit more open to the idea
06:12 of a real Catherine like in the movie.
06:14 Part of him wanted her to ask him to come home,
06:17 but the real Catherine also spurred him on,
06:19 though it had a little more to do
06:21 with their religious beliefs.
06:22 - You quit your job and you go and rescue those kids.
06:26 - Operation Underground Railroad, right.
06:29 - How long you been doing this?
06:31 - 12 years.
06:32 - How do you do it?
06:33 - After leaving homeland security,
06:35 Tim starts his own ventures
06:37 in ensuring the safety of young people.
06:39 This is what would eventually turn
06:40 into Operation Underground Railroad,
06:42 a nonprofit organization
06:44 that focuses its efforts on anti-trafficking.
06:46 - This job tears you to pieces.
06:49 This is my one chance to put those pieces back together.
06:52 - Operation Underground Railroad
06:54 conducts sting operations to rescue victims.
06:56 It has also been accused, however,
06:59 of ties to conspiracy theories
07:00 and embellishing reports of its work.
07:03 Leading anti-trafficking expert, Ann Gallagher,
07:06 criticized the organization as unethical
07:08 as lacking understanding
07:09 about how to dismantle criminal networks.
07:12 This has made the organization a controversial one.
07:15 - And that's the beauty of this film
07:16 is that everybody can, at the end of the film,
07:19 have the opportunity to pay it forward.
07:21 - External funding, right.
07:23 - In December of 2013,
07:25 when Glenn Beck was starting to raise the money,
07:27 and that was like, oh crap, now the money's here.
07:30 I'm gonna have to actually quit my job.
07:32 - As mentioned before,
07:33 Tim pulling out of homeland security
07:35 leaves him without financial backing
07:37 to continue his investigation.
07:39 He's eventually introduced
07:40 to a wealthy Colombian citizen named Paul,
07:42 whom he persuades to help them
07:44 by appealing to his moral center.
07:46 In reality, Ballard was actually assisted in this way
07:49 by political commentator, Glenn Beck,
07:51 who helped raise the funds for them
07:53 to continue their subsequent operations.
07:55 - Is this after you made the decision to leave?
07:57 - Glenn started to help me raise money as I was leaving.
08:00 - Ballard has said that Beck was even written into the movie,
08:04 but that his part was cut for time restraints.
08:06 - He was in the original script, by the way.
08:07 - Yes.
08:08 - But they just, again, just, you know, the room.
08:10 - Yeah, yeah, the amount of space.
08:12 - We can also see how Beck's presence
08:14 may have been a little distracting narratively.
08:17 Operation Triple Take, right.
08:19 One of the most heart-pounding sequences in the film
08:21 is when Tim and his team lure traffickers
08:23 and their victims to a remote island.
08:26 While they don't find Rocio,
08:27 they do rescue 54 and arrest all the conspirators.
08:31 - Hear that?
08:32 (dramatic music)
08:36 - That's the sound of freedom.
08:37 - Though the film has been called out
08:39 for embellishing certain details,
08:41 this is one that was surprisingly low-balled to the audience.
08:44 Not only did Operation Triple Take,
08:46 in which Suarez was detained, actually happen,
08:49 but the rescue count was much higher in reality.
08:52 In total, over 120 trafficked individuals
08:56 were accounted for,
08:57 with the majority of them actually being adults.
08:59 - The actual number was 100 and,
09:03 I want to say 130, 127.
09:05 - So the 54 that's in the film.
09:07 - It's only telling a third of the story.
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09:23 One Man Rescue Mission, wrong.
09:27 - We're talking about extracting an 11-year-old girl
09:30 from an army of rebels.
09:31 - After failing to locate Rocio,
09:33 Tim learns that she may be being held
09:35 by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
09:37 deep in the Amazon.
09:39 - It's all rebel territory.
09:40 No one goes in.
09:41 Not the army, not the police, not us.
09:45 - What if this was your daughter?
09:47 - Posing as doctors,
09:48 he and Vampiro make their way towards the compound,
09:51 with Tim ultimately getting the job done himself.
09:53 - There's a new Marine unit coming.
09:55 You're a hero.
09:58 - While Ballard conducted a similar operation,
10:01 it was on the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic,
10:03 and they were instead looking for someone named Garty,
10:06 whom they still haven't found.
10:08 Ballard also never conducted a one-man mission,
10:11 nor did he kill a captor along the way.
10:13 It's the most sensational part of the movie,
10:16 so it's not hard to see
10:17 that it's also the most fictionalized.
10:20 (dramatic music)
10:23 (upbeat music)
10:25 (dramatic music)
10:28 (upbeat music)
10:30 (dramatic music)
10:33 (dramatic music)
10:36 (upbeat music)
10:39 [BLANK_AUDIO]