**_Sorta “Taken 4,” but starring Jim Caviezel and focusing on children enslaved by sex traffickers_** A Homeland Security agent (Caviezel) in SoCal tracks down people involved in child pornography, but he decides to leave the agency to save children trapped in sex slavery, starting with a little boy from Honduras. He teams-up with a former cartel accountant (Bill Camp) to track down the kid’s sister in which he must eventually infiltrate a camp of Columbian revolutionaries in the Amazon jungle. Made in 2018 but not released until 2023, “Sound of Freedom” is based on the real-life story of Tim Ballard, the founder of Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.). It features actual footage of children being captured by slavers on CCTV. Imagine a more gritty-realistic version of the “Taken” movies, with Liam being replaced by Caviezel, and that’s this film. This is a well-done, eye-opening picture about the perverted human cockroaches amongst us, but it isn’t entertaining in the conventional sense for obvious reasons. It amusingly became anathema to Lefties, also for obvious reasons. The flick runs 2 hours, 11 minutes, and was shot in Cartagena, Colombia with additional scenes done in Calexico, California. GRADE: B-

Though at times I felt luck played a bit too much of an hand in this drama, it's still quite a potent telling of the story of dedicated real-life agent Tim Ballard (Jim Caviezel) who spent much of his time working for the US Government trying to thwart the activities of people traffickers. More specifically, of those odious and venal monsters who kidnap and trade in young children who are destined to populate the sex industry and end up drug addicts and diseased in the process. When he rescues a young boy from such a scenario, he discovers that his sister was also taken - and the youngster and his father implore Ballard to try to find her too. Impossible, you might think - but a lucky break points in the direction of a lawless area of the Colombian jungle where even the local army doesn't go. Working closely with a man with quite a murky past and now his highly useful general factotum Vampiro (Bill Camp), they head off, disguised as doctors, into the wilderness. Can he locate her? Can he rescue her and get out alive? No, there's not oodles of jeopardy about any of that - but this film really does use this seemingly impossible mission to shine a light on these disgusting practices that still thrive in ostensibly civilised, Christian societies. Cavielzel is on good form here offering us an hybrid of adventure and action coupled with a highly developed moral compass. Camp, likewise, delivers quite a charismatic effort and local copper Jorge (Javier Godino) adds an extra dimension proving that the Colombian authorities found this practice just as revolting as anyone else. It's not brutal nor particularly graphic, it just allows our own imagination to put two and two together here and is a really effective indictment of a behaviour that truly turns the stomach. From a creative perspective, the photography - especially in the jungle - is first rate and all-in-all this is a thought provoking enterprise that's well worth two hours of your time.