Sound of freedom

Hangdogroad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120836227#Comment_120836227

Which newspaper did you pick up?

Jack Daw

Be interested in looking at this whenever it's available on DVD.

Couldn't care less about the QANON stuff (whatever that is) or if Jim Cavaziel is a loon (So is Tom Cruise and it doesn't turn me off his films), I just like action films as a way to while away a boring weeknight and seeing as it's got so much attention from the media I'd like to see what all the fuss is about.

flasher0030

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120836340#Comment_120836340

Yesterday, it dropped into a streaming site that I use.

Fysh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120837470#Comment_120837470

I had a check on JustWatch to see if it was up on any of the larger legit streaming sites and it came up blank for the UK and Ireland. Is it on a legit site or, ah, somewhere on the high seas, so to speak?

More to the point of the thread, have you watched it? If so, what did you make of it?

flasher0030

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120837571#Comment_120837571

High seas!!! And I just saw that it is CAM version, so poor quality. Not worth watching it until proper version is available - which will probably be another 2 weeks.

Haven't seen it but will definitely watch it. Seems to be getting positive reviews in general.

JP Liz V1

Has Prime, Netflix or Apple got the streaming rights?

Silentcorner

The Rolling Stone Headline -

""The Sound of Freedom" is a Superhero movie for dads with brainworms.

The QAnon tinged thriller about child trafficking is designed to appeal to the conscience of a conspiracy addled boomer."

Wow, they reaaaaaallly don't want people to watch this!!

Of course, none of these outlets can be taken seriously given they have failed to identify anyone that Epstein was trafficking children to!! In fact, they are more likely to drive awareness and box office revenue given their paltry grip on culture these days!!!

It will be available on twitter I believe in the coming weeks!

~Rebel~

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120838545#Comment_120838545

Or maybe it’s just not a great movie…?

I mean, the trailer alone makes it look like a fairly generic poorly written low-budget actioner…. the type of thing that usually goes straight to VOD, and doesn't warrant a review from any major publication/site in the first place. It's getting more attention because of the political aspect, not in spite of it.

I’d guess it’s probably ‘fine’.

(Also, film review sites can't be taken seriously because they didn't do investigative journalism on child trafficking? It's a movie. It obviously first and foremost has to get judged on the merits of how it stands up as a movie. It can have the best message in the world - but if its an average film, its an average film.)

Silentcorner

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120838892#Comment_120838892

The movie might be good, might not be I'll judge myself if I ever get to see it...

But I was referring to the myriad of news outlets that are warning their readers not to watch this movie.

This beauty from that "serious" news outlet - The Guardian starts with the following.

"Type the words “sound of freedom” into Twitter (decent people who wish to live good, happy lives should under no circumstances actually do this)"

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jul/06/sound-of-freedom-movie-qanon-jim-caviezel

This article/review can only be described as demented! About two thirds of this article (about the movie) is not about the movie!

Maybe you can post on a link where The Guardian lists the people Epstein trafficked kids to? Maybe I missed that one!

~Rebel~

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120838960#Comment_120838960

My point is the film review section of any publication, or any standalone film sites, are for film. I don't think it's realistic to judge a film reviewer's output based on what other completely unrelated people at a publication do. Film critique is it's own separate thing, and the people doing it will have nothing to do with anyone doing anything else at a place.

As for the review - I mean it's a take. I wouldn't call it demented. The movie isn't famous because it's a top quality movie, it's famous because of all the promotional stuff around it (the same reason we have 3 pages of discussion over a random low budget action film that no-one here has actually seen), so it makes sense that that will be part of the coverage. The Guardian is also always going to have a more 'thinkpiece' type review than a more specialised film site like Roger Ebert (2 stars).

As an aside, there is something quite odd and a bit grubby about pushing so hard for more people to go spend money on seeing the movie so they can save the children... if that's really the goal, shouldn't they use their end-credit QR codes to point viewers to charities or amnesty international etc to actually try to save the children, instead of to ticket sites to just buy more tickets? Like, in theory the former would be quite a good active move - you've just shown these specific people the horrors of child trafficking, so they'll never be more open to donating to charity/support organisations... feels like a big opportunity wasted if the goal is to provide help.

somebody_else

You can disagree with someone or what he says but agree on point which is moral correct.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95v6zmwj-lM

I'm wonder if it will be released in theaters outside of US or will be sent to some obscure VOD.

Jack Daw

There seems to be a concerted effort by a lot of the media to encourage people not to watch the film, not because it's a bad film but because it's creators have the "wrong" political views, very rarely does this happen with any film, generally reviewers say whether its good or not and leave it at that and not judge people for liking the film.

It's got 78% favourable reviews from critics and 99% favorable reviews from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes so if both audience and critics think it's decent it sounds like it might be worth a watch.

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120839561#Comment_120839561

Because believing in Qanon/everyone I don't like is a pedo is "wrong political views".

~Rebel~

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120839561#Comment_120839561

It's a pretty unique situation in fairness though... it's rare for a film to hit the mainstream carrying so much ideological/political baggage, and even moreso for that rhetoric to be such a large part of promoting the film.

The makers/distributer must be delighted with the bit of backlash though, any publicity for a film is good publicity really. For instance in a vacuum I'd have watched that trailer, immediately gone 'nah, looks terrible', and that would've been it. Whereas now because of all this, I'm a bit more intrigued - and even from a film-industry-work point of view feel like I should watch it to be able to be part of the conversation.

I also think 'concerted' is the wrong word. Everybody's calling everything concerted these days, as if there are these great conspiracies everywhere, with everyone back-channel communicating over the united action they're all going to take about every topic. Life's not that simple or co-ordinated. If only it were!

Jack Daw

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120839602#Comment_120839602

Most people don't know or care what QANON is.The only people who seem to know what it is are people who profess to hate it.

Lots of very scummy people have made films over the years and yet there never seems to have been quite as much effort put in to telling people not to watch those films.

Tom Cruise is a member of a nonsensical cult/religion which has a dreadful reputation (it campaigns against the benefits of psychiatry/psychology for example) but you don't hear the media constantly telling people they shouldn't watch his films .

Durtynell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120827283#Comment_120827283

Perhaps you should watch your cat as he catch mouse and yet not kill him outright as cat "play" with mouse.

Why?

~Rebel~

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120839665#Comment_120839665

Tom Cruise should actually be an example of the opposite - the scientology stuff really hurt his career for years. No-one was hiring him. He only got back into the mainstream through a combination of time, and through starring in films that his own company produced.

Now, imagine he made a film more closely linked to Scientology, with some tangential narrative connection - like Battlefield Earth, and the shïtshow that accompanied that mess - and THAT would be a closer example to the rarity that Sound of Freedom actually is.

There's just not a lot of real comparisons. Like, hardcore conservative Clint Eastwood did the gun-worshipping 'American Sniper', and generated significantly less heat than this is.

Jack Daw

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120839685#Comment_120839685

Tom Cruise is probably the biggest movie star of all time, I'd argue his career hasn't really been hurt by the Scientology stuff at all .All his films do well at the box office, audiences weren't really turned off by his personal beliefs because his films tend to be entertaining.

For such a small film there has been a huge amount of campaigning against it by the media who supposedly hold the correct opinions on things.They'd have been better off to not say anything ,their telling people they shouldn't watch it only piques peoples interest.

You can view any film in isolation if you want, if it's entertaining then the politics of it's creators are largely irrelevant.

American Sniper wasn't particularly great propaganda for gun worshipping, Chris Kyle came across as a complete asshole in the film and if it was supposed to pro gun/pro US Military I'd argue the end result was the exact opposite

mewso

Slowly backs away from thread.

~Rebel~

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120839799#Comment_120839799

Oh it definitely did, like, in a big way. I'm surprised you don't remember it - he was a laughing stock for a few years.

In the 6 years prior to the release of the most controversial of the Scientology leaks and his insane "jumping on coach" madness, he starred in 5 films produced by companies other than his own. In the 6 years after that point, he starred in none that he didn't make himself. Paramount dumped him in a very highly publicized move, both for his behaviour, and his impact on box office figures for MI:3. Here's a little piece from NPR at the time that talks about it briefly for instance - https://www.npr.org/2006/08/23/5698612/an-ugly-public-split-for-cruise-and-paramount

There were continuous conversations for a good few years about when/if he'd become 'bankable' again. From 2006 onwards he had a run of box office disappointments in MI:3, Valkyrie, Lions for Lambs, Knight & Day, Rock of Ages etc. Then in 2011/2012 it was his own properties of MI: Ghost Protocol and Jack Reacher that finally brought him back - and he pushed on with Oblivion and Edge of Tomorrow, and has been pretty much back since.

But again - to actually draw the comparison, you would need to look at a Scientology adjacent film that Tom Cruise would've made. THEN you'd have a comparison to the conversation around this film. It's those two pieces stuck together that make this one quite unique - i've not really seen a similar situation tbh.

As for American Sniper - where you're coming from matters a lot on that one (as it probably does on Sound of Freedom too). I agree that coming from an Irish sensibility, the whole thing comes across as making the guy look like a total jerk. But coming from a US sensibility (and i've lived in the US since before that came out) there was quite a bit of controversy around its portrayal of guns, and of the glorification of killing the character does etc. A quick google of "controversy American Sniper movie" will throw up a bunch of articles on it. But even with that movie having a very high profile, this Sound of Freedom one has that extra ingredient mentioned above.

"You can view any film in isolation if you want, if it's entertaining then the politics of it's creators are largely irrelevant."

That's my point - in isolation i'd definitely be giving this a miss, but will likely watch it now so i'm informed for the conversations on it over here, with the movie being the centerpiece of a larger conversation.

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120839665#Comment_120839665

Qanon makes other conspiracy theories look like a David Attenborough documentary.

pjohnson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120839885#Comment_120839885

A lot of hardcore conspiracists draw the line at QAnon.

That is only for the craziest of the crazies.

gmisk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120839674#Comment_120839674

Did you have a stroke while in the middle of typing this world salad of nonsense?

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120840142#Comment_120840142

Yeah but they don’t start of with the full crazy, they lure you in with “wont someone think of the children” and then you get to the Hillary Clinton eats kids faces and JFK jr will rescue us all.

https://vozwire.com/the-shadowy-qanon-guru-who-many-believe-is-jfk-jr-including-jim-caviezel-and-roseanne-barr-is-recruiting-in-order-to-control-elections/

The White Wolf

Jim does seem to have lost the plot, but I'd be a hypocrite if I dismissed this film outright given that I tend to look past Tom Cruise's beliefs when watching his films.

I really loathe just how much the political spectrum has invaded film (cough, Joker) however in this case, based on everything I've seen, the flack is probably warranted between the dodgy donation racket going on, and Caviezel's bizarre interviews for the film where it looks like he's reading off a teleprompter.

Based on what I've seen of the film I wouldn't be going out of my way to see it anyway, though I am intrigued by reviewers like Jeremy Jahns saying that it's good, and I wouldn't typically lump him in with the "anti woke" ranters on YouTube led by the likes of Critical Drinker.

Siobhan82

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120831387#Comment_120831387

I've never heard him once speaking in support of Qanon clowns, so how about, you show us some reference to it?

mewso

Do you think they are making it up? Do a search for "The Global Elite Blood Harvesting" on youtube and you will see Jim spouting the most crazy sh1t. I'm not embedding it here.

flasher0030

Has anyone here actually seen the film. I know nothing about Qanon. Never heard of it until this thread. It doesn't make any difference to me re their beliefs, conspiracy theories. Just wondering is the movie any good? Is it a mystery/thriller type move? If there are political/religious beliefs thrown in there in the movie, it doesn't impact on my assessment of a film. I read someone here say that Nefarious was pressing religious beliefs in-your-face. Went over my head - I just took it for an interesting character study.

gmisk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120845036#Comment_120845036

Plenty of examples on youtube.

This story covers some of the most recent nonsense he has spouted.

https://www.rawstory.com/actor-pushes-qanon-theory-of-infant-blood-drinking-while-promoting-film-screening-for-donald-trump/

johnny_ultimate

Mod note: Deleted a handful of posts for obvious reasons (personal insults / random gibberish).