0:00

The biggest movie in the country is Barbie.

0:02

Hi Barbie! The second biggest movie

0:05

is Oppenheimer.

0:07

But have you heard about the third biggest movie

0:10

in the country? It's not Tom

0:12

Cruise and Mission Impossible 7

0:15

Dead Reckoning Part 1. It's

0:17

not Harrison Ford and Indiana

0:19

Jones and the Dial of Destiny Part 5. It's

0:22

an action drama about fighting

0:24

child sex trafficking called

0:27

Sound of Freedom. Did

0:30

that make you feel? Giving

0:35

a child his freedom. It

0:39

felt good. On Today Explained,

0:41

we're going to figure out how this grim movie

0:43

you haven't seen a single billboard for

0:46

is beating Tom Cruise and

0:48

Indiana Jones at the box

0:50

office.

1:00

Today, Today

1:03

Explained. It's Today Explained.

1:06

I'm John Jergensen and I'm an entertainment reporter

1:08

at the Wall Street Journal. We asked John over

1:10

to tell us about the third biggest movie in

1:12

the country.

1:14

Yeah, this third movie is Sound of Freedom.

1:17

Hear that? That's

1:22

the sound of freedom. And

1:24

you know, you could call it a dark horse in

1:27

the box office race this year except

1:29

this is a movie that people

1:31

didn't even see as in the race going

1:34

into this summer. It just wasn't on most

1:37

people's radars before it opened

1:39

and before it did big numbers. It's

1:41

a crime thriller, kind of an old-fashioned crime

1:44

thriller about a government agent whose

1:46

job is to deal with criminals who

1:49

traffic in children. We're

1:51

Homeland

1:51

Security, you know we can't go off rescuing

1:54

Honduran kids in Colombia. And

1:56

you know, he feels hemmed in

1:58

by bureaucracy and

1:59

and the restrictions of government work. And

2:02

it's based on the work of a real

2:04

organization and a real person,

2:06

Tim Ballard. And it's

2:09

the hero, it's played by Jim Caviezel,

2:11

who many know from the Passion of the Christ. Jesus.

2:14

We know him as Jesus. And certain

2:16

other things in the culture. He's been kind

2:18

of a controversial figure in Hollywood

2:21

because of things that he does in his personal

2:23

life and things he says in his personal life. We are headed

2:25

into the storm of all storms.

2:28

Yes.

2:31

The storm is upon us. What

2:33

did you think of it? Is it good? You saw it twice.

2:35

So does that mean you'd want to see it a third time? I

2:39

saw it twice. I think I got it. It's

2:42

a fine movie. I'm not a film critic. Personally,

2:45

I'd say it's a little overwrought and maybe there's

2:47

not as much action as you might expect

2:49

from the way it's framed in movie

2:52

trailers and things like that. But it's

2:54

a perfectly capable adult drama

2:56

that does its job and it's

2:58

well made. Maybe more interesting

3:01

than whether this movie is good

3:02

or not is its

3:05

backstory. And you wrote about this for the Wall

3:07

Street Journal. Where did this movie come from?

3:10

So the company behind this

3:12

film is Angel Studios. And

3:14

this is a Utah based content

3:17

company run by a family

3:19

who is part of the

3:21

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They

3:24

don't call themselves a faith-based studio

3:27

but all of their films are, I would say

3:29

faith adjacent. Their mission, they

3:31

say is to amplify light through

3:33

their storytelling. Also clean content

3:36

that they want to give people as an alternative to Hollywood

3:38

fare. Hollywood has no idea

3:40

what type of content actually matters to you.

3:43

80% of Hollywood movies fail because they don't

3:45

have a soul. What they are known for are

3:48

Bible stories, clean comedy.

3:50

They're also known in the past for

3:53

their fight against major Hollywood studios

3:55

because their first business was

3:57

to kind of provide this clean content

3:59

to families.

3:59

So they were taking Hollywood movies and essentially

4:02

cleaning them up for people who didn't want cursing

4:05

and nude scenes and violence

4:07

and things like that in their family movies. Meaning

4:10

you can watch Wolf of Wall Street without language,

4:12

Game of Thrones without nudity, or Transformers 4

4:15

without all of it because it's a terrible movie. And

4:17

as you can imagine, they quickly got sued by the major

4:19

studios. So that's essentially the

4:22

origin story of Angel Studios. That's

4:24

really kind of the basis of their company and then they took

4:26

this shift into actually producing

4:28

and distributing original

4:29

content of their own. Angel Studios

4:32

has produced content that makes a lot of money,

4:34

but more importantly, it's content that feeds

4:36

the soul. After watching The Chosen, John

4:39

said, I've never felt more connected to Jesus

4:41

and his disciples than I did watching The

4:43

Chosen. That's what kind of leads

4:45

us up to Sound of Freedom now.

4:48

Okay, so how does this company that's interested in making

4:51

sort of Hollywood content more

4:53

family-friendly end up

4:56

making a movie about

4:58

sex trafficking or do they make it? Sound

5:01

of Freedom essentially started as a Hollywood

5:03

film, but then took a very unhollywood

5:05

path into theaters.

5:11

The film was first connected to

5:14

Fox in Latin America, which

5:17

had a deal to distribute the film. And

5:20

then as filmmakers were working

5:23

on it, that's when the merger with Disney happened.

5:25

And as soon as Disney came

5:27

together with Fox, lots of films

5:30

got lost in the mix, got dropped along the

5:32

way, and this was one of them. So

5:35

that left the filmmakers with this

5:37

project that they had finished filming, but

5:40

no one to put it out in theaters, no one to distribute

5:42

it. The filmmakers said they went to all

5:45

the various studios, streamers, tried

5:47

to sell it, no one was buying. And

5:50

then through mutual acquaintances,

5:53

including Tim Ballard, the subject of film,

5:56

the filmmakers connected with Angel Studios

5:58

and within days they had... agreed

6:00

on a deal to put this

6:02

movie into the Angel system. And

6:05

so Angel moved very, very quickly this past

6:07

spring to get

6:10

the film to its base

6:12

of users called the Angel Guild. These are people

6:14

essentially vote on whether Angel

6:17

should back a project. The Angel

6:19

Guild said yes. Angel

6:21

Studios moved very quickly then to raise

6:23

the money that was required. So

6:26

Angel Studios said we need $5 million

6:28

to do this.

6:29

That's kind of the minimum level they needed to

6:32

get this film into theaters and to start promoting

6:34

it. So they go out to their

6:36

community that they've built over the years

6:39

and they said here is a public

6:42

offering for this film. We

6:44

want to raise $5 million. And

6:47

so users, their

6:49

user base

6:51

came to this project in Fox. Within

6:54

about two weeks they had raised $5 million. And

6:57

people were putting in anywhere from $100 of their

7:00

own to $10,000 or $25,000. These are individual investors in

7:05

the film through this SEC

7:07

fundraising opportunity. And that's

7:10

how Angel raised the money to put this film into

7:12

theaters.

7:18

Okay, so it drops in movie theaters appropriately

7:20

for a movie called

7:23

Sound of Freedom on the

7:37

4th

7:45

of July. It's up against Harrison

7:48

Ford

7:49

and Indiana Jones. How

7:51

does it do? The film does great.

7:54

Hear that? That's

7:55

a sound. Sound

8:00

of Freedom. I

8:02

mean, forget Indiana Jones at this point. It's

8:05

beating Mission Impossible, which came

8:07

out later. You know,

8:09

it's a fresher film, and it's got the biggest

8:11

movie star in the world behind

8:14

it. And Sound of Freedom, on

8:16

a day-to-day basis, is beating it at

8:19

the box office. Here we are about

8:21

three weeks after its release.

8:23

It has made about $127 million at

8:27

the domestic box office. This is a

8:29

movie that was made for about $14.5 million. That

8:32

was its production budget, you know, a

8:34

very, very modestly made film. And

8:37

this $127 million box office,

8:40

it's a figure so staggering that

8:43

it's raising eyebrows. People

8:45

don't believe it. People think there's

8:49

some conspiracies at play here. Correct.

8:51

I think a lot of people not just are

8:54

surprised that this movie to them came

8:56

out of nowhere. And of course that raises

8:59

skepticism. There's a couple of different things

9:01

happening here.

9:03

One is that in

9:05

the case of faith-based films especially,

9:08

or faith-adjacent films, as I guess you would call

9:10

this, there is often

9:14

a dynamic where churches,

9:17

other institutions that support these

9:19

films will buy out a theater,

9:22

will rent a whole theater, to

9:25

allow their organization members

9:27

to go see this film for free because

9:29

they support the message. So this

9:31

is not unusual for faith-based

9:34

films to be sold out in theaters

9:37

and then have the theaters themselves be somewhat

9:39

empty. That may have been the

9:41

case, I think, in the beginning

9:44

for this film. That may have happened. And

9:46

certainly on social media, you can find reports

9:49

of people documenting sold

9:51

out theaters that were somewhat empty

9:54

for this film.

9:55

Went to go watch Sound of Freedom and

9:57

the employees said we bought the last two seats

9:59

for this show. Look how empty

10:01

it is. But I

10:04

am highly skeptical that

10:06

this is some kind of conspiracy

10:08

of, you know, papering these movie

10:10

theaters just to kind of boost the box office

10:13

revenue.

10:14

There may have been kind of a

10:17

lag in the cultural phenomenon

10:20

around this film. Perhaps, you

10:22

know, the buyouts and the

10:24

movie theater rentals did happen in some places.

10:31

But I think what has occurred since then

10:34

is what you often see, you know, a hit begets

10:36

hit and word of mouth begets

10:38

more word of mouth. And then once

10:41

the hit status of the film kind of hits

10:43

the culture and the news media, people

10:45

get curious and they do go out to see this film. So

10:48

there's no denying that this has

10:51

created this groundswell and also

10:54

landed at a time where I think conservative

10:56

moviegoers

10:58

and conservative media were looking for

11:00

something to champion and were looking for something

11:03

to rally around. And this film

11:05

kind of created a, you know, a unifying

11:07

cause. Who doesn't want

11:09

to go out and see a popcorn film for a good

11:11

cause?

11:23

John Jurgensen, Wall

11:25

Street Journal. It turns out there are all sorts

11:27

of people who don't want to go see a popcorn film

11:29

for a good cause. We're going to hear from

11:31

one of them in a minute on Today Explained.

11:47

Just a quick heads up, this part of the show

11:49

is going to feature some talk about sex trafficking.

11:59

paying tickets forward to people who might

12:02

not usually go to the movies, but undoubtedly

12:05

a big part of that success has to do with people wanting

12:08

to see a movie that's got a message. And

12:10

the message here is that child sex trafficking

12:13

is heinous

12:14

and needs to be stopped. No arguments.

12:17

But not everyone is jazzed to

12:19

see Sound of Freedom as a vessel

12:22

for that message because of the real life man

12:24

and organization this movie's about. The

12:27

man is Tim Ballard. The

12:29

organization is Operation

12:32

Underground Railroad. OUR.

12:34

Writer Meg Conley knows

12:36

them both. So unfortunately I

12:39

have some personal experience with the

12:42

organization behind

12:44

the movie Operation Underground Railroad.

12:50

In 2014 I went

12:52

on what they called a jump,

12:55

which was basically a human trafficking

12:57

raid that was supposed to be

13:00

one step in saving the world from what

13:03

they called the enslavement of children, like through human trafficking.

13:06

I was 28 years old. My

13:09

dad, who was my best friend, he had

13:11

just died. I had two young

13:13

children. I was a stay at home

13:15

mom, kind of grappling with the

13:18

isolation of care

13:20

work in America. And I was

13:22

just lost. There was a lot of grief,

13:25

there was a lot of confusion, and I wanted

13:28

a purpose. I think that one

13:31

way to get through grief

13:33

and isolation is to

13:36

feel like you're doing good work in the world.

13:39

And

13:40

the grief and isolation was making even

13:43

that difficult for me to find.

13:53

So I get a call one afternoon

13:55

from this man named Tim Ballard, who

13:57

had founded Operation Railroad.

14:01

I had never spoken to him before, but he

14:03

did attend church with my parents,

14:06

which is, I think, how he knew about

14:08

me. At the time I was writing, I

14:10

guess what they were calling like a mommy

14:12

blog, and Operation

14:14

Underground Railroad was a relatively

14:17

new organization, and I think

14:19

he wanted some publicity for it. And

14:22

so when he called me, he asked if I was interested

14:24

on going

14:25

on a human trafficking raid with the

14:27

organization in the Dominican Republic,

14:30

because he said he really liked my work,

14:33

and he thought that I

14:35

articulated things with

14:38

insight, that I was a good observer, and he

14:41

wanted me to document

14:44

the work that they were doing to save children.

14:47

Ballard's whole pitch at the time,

14:49

which I was

14:50

too naive

14:53

to question, was that he was

14:55

the ultimate authority on this. He talked

14:58

a lot about how he had worked for Homeland

15:00

Security, and that he had been trying

15:03

to get rid of human trafficking this way through like

15:05

official government channels, but they

15:07

weren't willing to do the work like

15:09

he was. So I believed him,

15:12

and who doesn't want to save the children? It felt

15:15

scary to go with him, but I said yes

15:17

because I felt like

15:19

it would be selfish to say no. We were

15:22

both members of the Church

15:24

of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at the time. I

15:26

no longer attend, but there

15:29

was also a power dynamic there that's hard to

15:33

explain to

15:34

people outside of that religion. The Mormon

15:37

Church, which is like how most people know it, has

15:39

a male-only priesthood, which

15:41

means like the authority of God only works through

15:44

men, and women function

15:47

as supports. There

15:50

was also a sense that this was like

15:53

a divine call to action, along

15:56

with like maybe a moral one.

16:03

When we get to the Dominican Republic,

16:05

there's like a long ride to the

16:07

house where the raid is going to take place. And

16:10

when I get to the house, there's like a camera crew there,

16:13

which surprised me. And I'm

16:15

told that they film all their jumps

16:18

because they want to make a TV

16:21

series about all

16:23

of their anti-trafficking work

16:25

to raise awareness and get

16:28

more people involved, both within their

16:30

organization and outside their organization

16:33

with anti-trafficking

16:35

efforts.

16:38

They have these meetings in the house, like in a back

16:40

room where the staff can't see what's going

16:44

on. And there's like a whiteboard and Tim Ballard is

16:46

standing by the whiteboard and there's like

16:48

a drawing of the house, like a layout of the house.

16:51

It is like a movie. And

16:54

Tim Ballard is, you know, he's like putting a dozen-ish

16:57

people there who are part of the jump and

17:00

they're all these like men, like

17:02

with like very tight t-shirt.

17:05

Like they do a lot of CrossFit. Like these are guys

17:07

who do a lot of CrossFit. It's 2014. CrossFit

17:11

is their

17:12

journey.

17:15

So the next day, the kids are going to be

17:17

there, you know, in an hour or two. And

17:20

my job is to blow

17:22

up balloons. So it looks like we're having

17:24

a party because they

17:27

want the traffickers when they come in with

17:29

the kids to be very sure

17:31

that like this is a

17:34

sex trafficking party where

17:36

like these men and this one woman, I

17:38

guess, are here to assault

17:41

these kids. The traffickers pull

17:43

up. So they've rented a bus. The OUR has rented

17:46

a bus and picked

17:48

up the traffickers where, and it's several

17:50

people trafficking these kids with kind of

17:53

one lead guy. And

17:55

there are 26 kids who end up showing

17:57

like being brought to the bus.

17:59

We get word that they're pulling up, and

18:02

so I am sent outside to the

18:04

pool where there's like a stack of soda cans

18:06

and kids start

18:08

filing out to the pool area. They're

18:11

mostly middle school to high school

18:13

age. Some kids jump into the pool. I

18:16

hand other kids soda and I

18:18

feel, I'm

18:22

nauseated because I don't understand,

18:25

now that I'm confronted with these children, I

18:28

realize I don't understand what

18:30

led them to that bus. I get what

18:32

Tim has told me. Tim has told

18:35

me that they come a couple

18:37

days ahead of time and kind of like

18:39

spread the word that they're looking

18:42

for trafficked kids. He

18:44

says that once this

18:46

happens, they're approached by, you know,

18:49

in every location where they do this, they're

18:51

approached by a trafficker who says,

18:54

you know, like, I can get you kids if you want a party.

18:57

And then it goes from there, but

18:58

I don't understand, I realize at that point,

19:00

like, I don't understand

19:03

where these kids were before

19:05

the trafficker meets them at the

19:07

bus.

19:18

It's kind of the first time where I'm like, oh, I don't

19:21

know enough to be here. So,

19:26

Ballard is inside with the traffickers and he's

19:28

supposed to be like negotiating

19:30

the price of like each,

19:35

there's no good word here, service,

19:37

I guess, that will be like quote unquote,

19:39

like provided by each child, but really he's

19:42

negotiating the price of like each violation of

19:44

each child, right? Like

19:46

that would be the correct terminology,

19:48

like each victimization of

19:50

each child. And I think that

19:53

that is going

19:55

to wrap up.

20:01

You know, I won't see any of it, but then

20:06

one of the OUR members opens the

20:08

back door and calls out to me and

20:10

says, Meg, Tim wants you inside.

20:13

I don't want to go inside, but I also

20:16

don't know how to say no. So

20:19

I say yes, and I walk inside.

20:23

And Valor

20:25

is sitting inside, and there's money

20:27

on a table in front of him, and

20:30

he's sitting and

20:33

he's talking with them and laughing

20:35

and

20:37

I'm watching him count money onto

20:39

this coffee table and I'm kind of standing towards the

20:41

back of the room. I'm like, okay, he just

20:43

wants me in here to observe. And

20:45

so if I can just get far enough

20:48

away from everything that's happening, this

20:50

is still okay. But

20:52

the raid starts, and it's

20:55

terrifying.

21:00

There's a lot of shouting and

21:02

a lot of screaming

21:05

and Tim's yelling, who

21:08

sold me out? Or who ratted like

21:10

a movie? And I

21:13

move quickly to get to the back door because I

21:15

want to be out by the pool. That's where I was supposed to

21:17

be. I don't want to be here. And

21:20

when I open the back door, there's

21:22

a law enforcement person

21:24

standing there with a very, very, very large

21:27

gun.

21:28

And he yells at me to

21:30

get back inside and get down. And

21:33

so I'm forced onto the ground, onto those

21:35

beige tiles,

21:38

and face down,

21:41

and I'm handcuffed.

21:47

And the whole time, at this point, once the raid

21:49

has started, they're not just relying

21:52

on the hidden

21:54

cameras anymore. The camera crew

21:56

has come out and they're moving

21:58

around the room filming.

21:59

the whole thing and I'm

22:02

face down on the ground in this room I was

22:04

never supposed to be in and there's like, I

22:07

can out of the corner of my eye like see

22:09

a camera like sweeping over me. And

22:12

that footage is on YouTube.

22:14

I watched it yesterday. I saw your face.

22:17

Yeah, it's insane.

22:19

You know, I get home and

22:22

it takes me a long time to understand like

22:26

what happened and like they're just little

22:29

realizations that eventually become like a

22:32

become a whole answer. In 2015,

22:36

I decided to learn more about human

22:38

trafficking, which was still kind of difficult to

22:40

do in 2014 after the raid. I

22:43

talked to one human trafficking expert

22:45

who's not involved with OUR and when I explain

22:47

everything that happened, they

22:50

say like, do you realize

22:52

you do realize how wrong all of that was, right?

22:55

Like none of that was right.

22:57

Tell me what you learned about this style

22:59

of, of sort of vigilante

23:03

sex trafficking policing. I

23:05

mean, how many of those girls

23:08

that were at that house that day in 2014

23:10

had a history of

23:13

being involved in this kind of work? Yeah.

23:17

So after this thing, I asked like, where are the 26? So

23:19

there were 26 kids and at the time they're telling

23:21

me it's 26 kids. It ends up being

23:25

not everyone's not every

23:28

person there was underage. And

23:31

I'm told that at the

23:33

time that they've all been, they've

23:36

all been, you know, trafficked over and over again.

23:38

I find out later that that's not true. I

23:40

mean, these kinds of anti trafficking

23:42

raids, they create demand where there isn't

23:45

always demand. At least two

23:47

of the kids on that raid had

23:50

never been trafficked before. That was the first time,

23:53

which means that like we created

23:55

trauma for them. They may never have experienced.

23:59

And then, and then

23:59

After the raid, I

24:02

think it was in 2015, foreign policy

24:04

comes out with a story about OUR

24:07

and it includes reporting

24:11

on this raid. And I find out that after

24:13

this operation,

24:18

a local organization

24:20

called the National Council for Children and

24:23

Adolescents, they're supposed to do

24:25

the aftercare and they realize like, you brought

24:27

us 20-ish kids. We

24:30

do not have the capacity to provide

24:33

services for this many people. We cannot

24:35

provide basically

24:37

safety. And so the kids were

24:40

released within a week or two and

24:44

lost. Nobody

24:46

knows what happened to

24:48

many of them, which means they

24:51

got a soda and a swim from us.

24:54

So potentially

24:57

they may have been back on the streets

25:00

being sex trafficked again in as

25:02

much as two weeks.

25:03

Yes, maybe by another

25:05

group doing like another military raid,

25:09

like anti-trafficking military raid, like

25:11

creating demand. That

25:14

was nearly 10 years ago, right? To

25:18

your knowledge, you know,

25:20

how is this organization Underground

25:24

Railroad, OUR evolved

25:27

since then? I think they've gotten better

25:29

at appearances slightly.

25:32

So Tim Ballard, he, as I watched

25:34

over the years,

25:40

I was able to understand, you

25:43

know, by 2016, 2017, after

25:45

a lot of

25:47

research and a lot of therapy, like everything

25:51

that was wrong with that raid, but

25:53

also with the model as a whole,

25:55

it doesn't work. We

25:58

know that like,

26:00

anti-trafficking raids don't

26:02

work. We know that the people,

26:04

like the traffickers who are arrested

26:07

a lot of the time, they're

26:09

usually small fish. And

26:12

another small fish comes in and like takes

26:15

their place. This doesn't like address

26:17

like some of the like actual, like

26:22

the people in charge of like some of the cartels that are

26:24

actually, actually like really running

26:27

like human trafficking rings. Like that

26:29

is real, but like this does not

26:32

do anything to stop that. It just means

26:34

like someone else is going to traffic

26:37

kids next time.

26:39

But it also

26:42

doesn't prevent, it doesn't prevent human

26:44

trafficking. Like we know what prevents

26:46

human trafficking. Social

26:49

safety nets prevent human trafficking. What

26:51

Tim Ballard does does not prevent

26:54

human trafficking. What it does do is create

26:57

a cult of personality and

27:01

it turns the world into

27:03

Star Wars.

27:09

They're a myth-making

27:12

engine. Like they

27:14

exist to generate

27:17

a world in which bad

27:21

things only happen. And

27:23

quote unquote, like the special world, which

27:26

happens to be according to who you are,

27:29

not America.

27:31

America is like the

27:33

ordinary world where everything is

27:36

okay. But the special world,

27:38

the place where you experience like trials,

27:41

but also your transformation, that

27:45

is anywhere

27:46

where white men are not

27:50

like

27:52

the main demographic. Anyone

27:57

who follows Ballard or is part of

27:59

the world

27:59

the organization, they're on

28:02

the light side and anybody who

28:05

doesn't is on the dark side.

28:25

Meg Conley writes a newsletter called Home

28:27

Culture. You can also find her writing

28:30

at Harper's Bazaar and Slate, where

28:32

in 2021 she wrote about

28:35

her experience with Operation Underground Railroad.

28:37

The essay is titled Called by God and

28:40

in it you'll find a comment from OUR

28:42

about Meg's experience. They said,

28:45

As any other successful organization does,

28:47

we have evolved and are continually

28:49

working to professionally improve

28:52

our standard operating methods and practices.

28:55

Part of that evolution perhaps? Vice

28:57

News reported last week that Tim Ballard,

28:59

the guy whose story Sound of Freedom

29:01

is based on, stepped away

29:04

from Operation Underground Freedom.