After my column about not being able to find a theater that screened “Sound of Freedom” appeared last week, I was on the receiving end of a lot of generous offers of rides, tickets and they even set up a GoFund me to pay for my taxi fare.

I did finally bite the bullet and take an Uber out to the AMC Marple 10 this past Sunday, which was the closest place I could find in suburban Philadelphia that didn’t involve dodging bullets during the previews.

I was very happy to see that the theater was about three-quarters full, and many of the people looked like couples out on a date, very different from the older crowd that attended “Oppenheimer,” which I’d seen the day before.

That should give you an idea of how “Sound of Freedom” is the little movie that could, making its way into our consciousness despite the mean-spirited and grossly inaccurate attacks from critics.

As someone who has dealt with the back end of trafficking, namely the people who make it to the United States and are able to somehow find a lawyer to help them seek asylum and protection, I can confirm that many of the scenes depicted in “Sound of Freedom” echo what people have told me in the past about how they made their way to the U.S.

So many of these people, both old clients and acquaintances, have talked about the subterfuge used to lure people into the sex trades, the random violence and brutality of the human traffickers, and the absolute desperation of the victims.

This movie provides a necessary public service, in bringing this incredibly important issue to the eyes and ears of people who are otherwise ignorant.

When we talk about immigration, including what many on the right like to call an “invasion” and others refer to simply as the flow of “illegals,” the focus is on the motivation of the human cargo.

Many of those who don’t work in this field write off the desperation of a mother with no means of support for her children, or a father who is afraid his son will be recruited by gang members, as not “our problem.”

When people are in the asylum system, they have already been victims of violence and are seeking to have the broken pieces glued back again. I can help with the gluing together, but I cannot stop the breaking.

My anger arose from the lies that I have heard told about this film by so many in the mainstream media, and a large number on the left.

I initially gave some of them the benefit of the doubt, thinking that perhaps the film took aim at Democrats, or sacred liberal cows like marginalized groups.

I had some thought that the idea of sex trafficking became linked to the LGBTQ community and therefore the critics were angry because they thought it smeared, by association, vulnerable constituencies.

I was wrong. The only thing that I could see that would trigger the left was the underlying theme of faith, of the importance of God, a God that was not owned by Christians, Jews or Muslims.

The only reason I could find, other than a bitterness toward leading man Jim Caviezel was a hostility toward any film that had as its tagline: “God’s children are not for sale.”

I looked for technical inaccuracies. I looked for outright lies about our government and its inaction. I looked for some hook that would justify the rejection of this film by the intellectuals on the left, and all I came up with was that tagline and its significance.

If that is the only reason a film this powerful and this important is being marginalized by the kind of person who thinks Barbie is a feminist prophet, we’re in more trouble as a society than I ever thought.

Copyright 2023 Christine Flowers