Where I Watched it: Amazon
English Audio Description?: No
Cast: Jim Caveizel, Mira Sorvino, and Bill Camp
Written By: Rod Barr
Directed By: Alejandro Monteverdi
I dreaded the attention a review of this might bring to my YouTube, and that landed without any disruption, so let’s talk about Sound Of Freedom. A couple of things. I’m glad Mira Sorvino is working. Jim Caveizel is not my favorite human being, but he has turned in some terrific performances in his career. I do really love Frequency, and I even thought When The Game Stands Tall used him rather well. i pretty much fundamentally disagree with him on his life choices, but a bunch of people were working on this.
It’s also not quite the propaganda machine you would expect. I sat through Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas, so I know what propaganda disguised as a film looks like. i also curiously watched a few minutes of one of those Dinesh D’Souza films, and… Jesus. He’s never getting a documentary award from a mainstream organization.
But, Sound Of Freedom was being developed at 20th century Fox when that studio was bought by Disney. Sound Of Freedom was just one of many projects that either were cancelled, put in turnaround, or in the case of Freedom, shopped out, much like Nimona (which landed on Netflix). Ironically, that second film has a solid shot of getting an Animated Feature nomination this year, adding salt to the wounds of Disney’s decisions to dump fare that went on to be successful. If anything, Sound Of Freedom is probably one of the few instances where its notoriety was helped along by being unceremoniously discarded to Angel Studios. Many other Christian leaning, or right leaning films films didn’t come close to producing the same box office results. Films like Jesus Revolution did as expected, but fare like Nefarious ended up landing too quietly for anyone to really notice.
This film has also been oddly attacked for not being accurate, as if our laws of “Based On A True Story” were so tight that we couldn’t possibly allow this to besmirch that reputation. And, to the people on the other side, who think this film is 100% accurate, you know that’s impossible, and Hollywood makes things seem more cinematic all the time. Case in point, an entire brother is missing from the “True Story” of the Von Dutch brothers in The Iron Claw. Or the one I love to bring up, is the heartwarming critical success, Fly Away Home, starring Jeff Daniel’s and Anna Paquin. The movie is based on the true story told in the book Father Goose, which is about a man finding a creative way to help some geese find their migration route again. The difference? This heartwarming tale about a father and daughter doing it together is nonsense. Anna Paquin’s entire character was created out of thin air to sell tickets, and added an entire new layer to Jeff Daniels’s character of now being a father to a daughter he never actually had.
So, if Sound of Freedom blurs lines, I can think of more counters to your point, but at the same time, those who are so defensive because the guy the film is about super swears that this is a totally true story is giving zero credit to screenwriters or the director, whose job it is to take your true life story, take the boring shit out, condense it, and somehow make it exciting for two hours. If you don’t think that happened here, you’re just living in a fantasy world.
If you think I’m ever going to talk about the film, you’re here now. The problem is, this film was denied audio description on Amazon. They couldn’t be bothered to acquire an audio description track to make this film accessible for a wide audience, because apathy. Honestly, it’s always just apathy. Somewhere along the line, it just wasn’t important enough, and someone just didn’t care.
So I can’t really review this, because it’s not primarily in English. there’s quite a bit of Spanish spoken, and even though I’m working my DuoLingo, I’m not bilingual, so I was left in the dust. There are a surprising amount of sequences where no one is talking either, and Monteverdi is just capturing the general look or whatever. I’m not sure, again, because without audio description, blind and visually impaired people will be critically lost during this film.
I may not agree with the star, and I may not share an affinity for the fans of this film who made my social media news feed obnoxious for a solid month, but I do believe that accessibility is universal. I don’t need to want to watch Sound Of Freedom for me to advocate for it to be accessible for the ones who do want to watch it. So, since Amazon is in dereliction of duty, I’m calling them out. not because I’m desperate to give this a second watch, but because other blind people have expressed their dismay at the lack of accessibility online. Audio description is important, and billion dollar companies like Amazon don’t get a break from me when they try and say they don’t have the budget, or whatever. You made enough money that your CEO started his own space program, you’re doing it wrong. You cannot stand and claim any kind of diversity, inclusivity, or equity while continuing to take a la laissez faire attitude to just how much accessibility you are willing to provide to the blind and visually impaired community.
The answer isn’t “some”, or “we have a budget”. The answer is “everything”. You start by taking a vested interest in simply doing the bare minimum of acquiring all existing audio description, which would include this film, and then you build out from there. When your catalog changes, you adapt by adding new audio description, and continuing to acquire the existing audio description for the titles that have it. Anything less is not really equitable, and certainly isn’t inclusive. It’s the equivalent of inviting me into your house, but not letting me leave the foyer. Just because you opened the door and let me inside isn’t an achievement when I can’t go much beyond the front door, and when you look at the percentage of audio described content on Amazon Prime, Free Vee, and MGM Plus (all owned by the same parent), and compare that to the total amount of programming they offer, it’s like standing on the welcome mat that is just inside the front door for me to wipe my shoes on, and being told I can’t go any further. But I’m seeing other people milling about, and you keep greeting new guests, and they can see the whole house. I’d like to see the whole house too, and it starts with paying attention when you acquire the rights to stream something like Sound Of Freedom, which has an existing audio description track.
Like with most films that I watch without audio description, i can’t give this a grade. It’s unwatchable. Not because I’m mad it it, or aligned politically against it, but because it simply lacks the accessibility. I enjoyed the score though. especially since it was basically the only thing I had to listen to in some parts.
Final Grade: unwatchable