It’s refreshingly unaffected. The storytelling is routine. It warrants neither its hard-core disciples nor its worst enemies. Ignore the dishonest huffing and puffing.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 7, 2023

A thunderously crass and manipulative movie that is hampered by erratic pacing, pantomime bad guys and an overfondness for shots of Caviezel weeping God-fearing, manly tears.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 3, 2023

Jim Caviezel is a one-man scourge of child predators in this well-meaning thriller that doesn’t entirely deserve to be written off as culture-war propaganda.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 1, 2023

It’s bizarre, unsettling and yet – in the filmmaking equivalent of turning wine to water – bracingly dull to boot.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Sep 1, 2023

If Sound of Freedom blows your mind, it may be down more to the disorientating lack of a dramatic arc than learning what the MSM apparently don’t want you to know.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 31, 2023

This is just a dull and badly acted movie.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Aug 30, 2023

It’s worth a look because it’s a well-made example of a thriller inspired by unspeakable crimes that are being committed the world over.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 25, 2023

Though slickly made and never too openly lurid, at its core this is the simplest kind of exploitation movie, in which a stance of righteous indignation supplies an alibi for a fascination with hidden evil, linked in turn with a fear of corrupt foreigners.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Aug 25, 2023

As for the losers, start with everyone who gave their money and two hours and 15 minutes of their life to a story that is at best embellished and, whether intentionally or by coincidence, profiting off conspiracy-fueled mass hysteria.

| Jul 24, 2023

A blandly competent thriller that finds an easy way into your feelings since it deals with child trafficking (a grave subject matter that has been tragically co-opted as a rallying cry for xenophobic, pro-Trump types).

| Jul 16, 2023

But even as the film's pacing starts to thud... its work has been done, competently if not altogether artfully. Sometimes, obvious works just fine.

| Original Score: C+ | Jul 14, 2023

The narrative diffuses into an improbable “Heart of Darkness” style river journey. Only kind of dull.

| Jul 12, 2023

To know thousands of adults will absorb Sound of Freedom, this vigilante fever dream, and come away thinking themselves better informed on a hidden civilizational crisis… well, it’s profoundly depressing. Worse still, they’ll want to spread the word.

| Jul 7, 2023

A solemn, drawn-out bore.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 7, 2023

In a conventional pulp way, we’ve glimpsed the heart of darkness. We’ve seen something about our world that makes the desire to “take action” seem more than an action-movie gesture.

| Jul 3, 2023