Yeah, I thought so!
Furthermore:
Jim Caviezel stars as a hero trying to stop child traffickers in a paranoid new movie turning into a surprise box-office hit
www.theguardian.com
(Warning: contains some long words and intelligent commentary...)
The trafficking follows no motivation more elaborate than the servicing of rich predators, eliding all talk of body-part black markets and the precious organic biochemical of adrenochrome harvested as a Satanic key to eternal life. The first rule of QAnon: you don’t talk about QAnon where the normals can hear you.
Caviezel has saved that for his
promotional media appearances, such as a recent drop-in to Steve Bannon’s show War Room on MyPillow proprietor Mike Lindell’s streaming channel Lindell TV. In the course of their interview, he conveyed the severity of the situation by explaining that an enterprising salesperson would have to move 1,000 barrels of oil to match the sum they’d get for filling one barrel with the rendered corpses of the innocent. Elsewhere, he’s parroted falsehoods about Pizzagate and other underground cells subsisting on human blood, all of it pointing back to a foundation of conspiratorial thought targeting the Jewish and transgender communities.
These zestier strains of scaremongering are absent in the text itself, but they lurk in the shadows around a film outwardly non-insane enough to lure in the persuadable; the disappointingly un-juicy Sound of Freedom pretends to be a real movie, like a “pregnancy crisis center” masquerading as a bona fide health clinic. (Our hero Ballard, by the way, went on to found the paramilitary rescue squad Operation Underground Railroad, a group criticized as “arrogant, unethical, and illegal” by the authorities. But then, they
would say that. They’re in on it, this goes all the way to the top, etc.)
Those hoping for a few detached laughs at the deep-dish delusion sneaking onto the mainstream radar will be bored by the straight face donned for the duration of the run time – until, that is, a small counter in the corner of the credit roll warns of a “Special Message” in two minutes. Having dropped his character, Caviezel himself appears to say that though we might be feeling frightened or saddened, he’d like everyone to leave with a message of hope for the future. Directly after establishing that he’s not the center of attention here, he betrays an evident messianic complex by announcing that his movie could very well be the most important ever made, going so far as to compare it to Uncle Tom’s Cabin in its campaign to shine a light on 21st-century slavery. This is all for the children, we’re told, but they can’t do much to save themselves, can they?
For the first time, a self-serving foundation peeks through the cracks of noble service, the lone honest beat in a purported exposé of scandalizing facts. All of a sudden, this snare of wild-eyed falsehoods starts to make sense, its scattered ideology falling in line under the organizing principle of hoarded influence. And right on cue, as if in divine affirmation, a QR code pops onscreen linking to a site that puts patrons two key strokes away from buying $75 worth of additional tickets for the movie they’ve just seen. Though we differ on the culprits and causes, everyone agrees that child trafficking is indefensible, a third-rail standing that also makes the subject effective as a cudgel. Caviezel’s final statement double crystallizes the nonetheless foggy stakes: if you’re not with us, you’re with them, whoever they are.
