Actor Jim Caviezel on The Sound of Freedom

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Let's fruit stuff up. A radio show like no other. It's Brian Kilmeade. Tim Ballard has one mission, to track down child traffickers. Four months ago, Colombian authorities asked him to investigate a tip that children were being sold there as sex slaves. Within a half hour, this individual walks up to me, starts asking me what I'm here for, what I want. And within minutes, he says, well, I've got kids as young as 11 years old. Ballard, a former Homeland Security agent, now heads up Operation Underground Railroad, a non-profit group that rescues trafficked kids.

After that first meeting, the Colombians asked him to put together a sting. How they find these kids is they lure them in by pretending to have a modeling agency. They target them at 9 or 10 years old, and they were telling us that about by 11, they're ready for sex.

They're ready to be sold. What is that like, looking into that kind of person's eyes? It's horrifying, and this is why, because I've got a smile in the face of evil. Fifty-four boys and girls aged 11 to 18 were ushered in for what had been billed as a sex party. They were given candy and drinks and told to wait in this small room. This little 11-year-old boy, I remember, he asked one of my operatives if they could give him some cocaine or something.

He said, they usually give me something because I'm really scared. This is unbelievable. That is Tim Ballard being interviewed for a story in 2014 about child sex trafficking.

Because of that story, he ends up writing a book and doing a movie, and the movie is called Sound of Freedom. It's just taken this country by storm. It's got over 100 million tickets sold already.

People are seeing this all across the country. They're finding a way to get to the theaters. It's outstripping and outselling some major productions, and Jim Caviezel has been on all sides of things. He's been on major productions.

He's been on basement operations as being wildly successful, like Frequency. And now he's the star playing Tim Ballard in The Sound of Freedom. Jim Caviezel, welcome back to the show.

How are you, Jim? Thank you, Brian. Wonderful. Thank you.

I mean, I know first off I want to make this straight. We know that there's a strike going on, and to get this out of the way, there's a SAG strike that prevents actors in the AMPTP productions from promoting any projects. But your new film is not an AMPTP project, so you're not crossing any picket lines and coming on today.

That's correct. I'm there with my brothers and sisters of SAG. We obviously wanted to be a part of AMPTP, but Disney passed on this one.

This was theirs, but I'm there on all the AI stuff, and this is a war that SAG must win here, or we'll be in big trouble. So Tim Ballard tells his true story, and when asked who he wants to play him, he chooses you. What did that feel like? Well, he was a fan of The Passion of the Christ and The Count of Monte Cristo, and it feels obviously good, but I'm looking at the material and the script by Rob Barnes, Alejandro Monteverde, who's the director, who was just absolutely off the charts. And you're looking at it. Did you look at it when it was with Disney? Actually, it was at Fox at the time, so then Disney bought out Fox, and at that point, I looked at the material and everything, but I actually adopted three of my children from China, and I was very aware of the dangers that go on with children all around the world. So when I read it, it really touched my heart, especially the part when he said that God's children are not for sale, and then the other line was, well, when God tells you to do something, you don't hesitate. So tell everyone the story, Jim. Tim Ballard finds out about this child trafficking how? Well, he's a border agent, and he finds this little boy down. He takes down one of the worst pedophiles and traffickers with Ernst Lipichinsky, and this little boy that he rescues, about five years old, says, will you save my sister?

And he essentially goes down to Columbia, sells everything that he has, and goes and tries to find this little girl. And it's a simple story, but it's a true act of huge faith, and nothing short of the ultimate heroism. So did you see some of the news reports prior to reading the script? Did you understand that this was no dramatization, this happened? Did you fully understand that? I understood that, but it's far worse.

We can only show you and take the Alfred Hitchcock approach to filmmaking on this. It takes you to the edge, and it is something that would be disturbing, but the love of Tim and for these children comes through. And really, the power of it begs to ask you, are you willing to protect your own children? Are you willing to suffer what you're going to have to suffer in order to save God's children? I mean, they're the most innocent of human beings there.

They represent God unlike anything, and to think that this really goes on, and it's a $152 billion a year business is just mind-boggling. Where is it the worst? Where was it the worst, when I was filming? I mean, is it essential in South America where it's the worst? Oh, God, it's all over. It's in the Philippines.

I mean, Tim has done hits all over the place, and he continues to. They're building a whole more of a crack team, more of like a SEAL Team 6 group now. But when we were in Colombia, that was really bad, and I'll explain it. When you're in Mexico, you'll have guys pushing stuff on you, drugs or whatnot, when we're filming, and they'll come over when we're down at the beach, and they'll, you know, do you want cigarettes, cigars, whatever, drugs, cocaine, whatever you want. Do you want women, mueris?

And when we were down in like Cartagena, they'll say mueris, but then they say, do you want niños, little boys, niñas, little girls? Just right out in the open. So did you have this happen while you're filming this? Yes.

That's unbelievable. Yeah, well, you know, you're shooting, let's say, sometimes we have to work on Saturdays or whatnot, but we have security around us. There's a perimeter, and, you know, on an off day, I'm moving from one place to another.

I'll have a security crack team with me, but you'll have guys walk right up to you, and just, you know, right there on the street. Yeah. So, Jim, when did you shoot this? Well, this was in, we were August, I was filming 18, so 2018 going into 19. So we finished, and then it was ready to be, it was done about November 19, so it was ready to be seen in 19, and then you had the COVID and the whole thing, so then there was some difficulties there, but then obviously you show it to the studio and they didn't want it. So if Disney turns it down, you're thinking to yourself, okay, is this project dead?

Did you have hope? And then in comes Angel Productions. We knew we had something incredible, and the reaction was something you pray for for any filmmaker.

You know, you watch a movie like Frequency, who's going to want to watch a movie like that? You know, father-son talking over ham radio. But this is the creative brilliance of a lot of people that come up with ideas. That was obviously a fictional life story, but the love between a father and son was important.

This one obviously is the relationship in the family between the wife and the husband, and then getting the charge to go down and trying to find the child and having the chemistry, which, you know, I played basketball for many years, and having a team chemistry is really important. And that then obviously is shown on the screen, but when the reaction is that huge and for them to turn it down, it was puzzling. And we'd show it to other groups. We showed it to Netflix and the same thing across the board. Why do you think they did turn it down? Why would people want to turn down a movie with such impact based in reality?

Well, I have my feeling about what really is going on in a lot of parts of the world. I think you have to look at Epstein Island. I think that when we showed this in a screener in Vegas, there were about 1,500 people there. We showed like five screenings, and during a part of the movie, they continued to talk. And afterwards, after these five screenings, I said, during this one part, you guys always talked.

What were you saying? And they all yelled out, Epstein Island. And that's where you understand that Epstein Island isn't the only sex island out there.

Unbelievable. Jim, you live your part. You get into your parts.

I mean, I don't know how to act, but I just know that this is no part-time thing for you. You get into this character. That could be emotionally draining in a way that the audience says, oh, my God, I'm exhausted after watching this movie. What is it like living with this character and being Tim Ballard and the stress that you feel knowing that there are kids out there right now being tortured? Well, ultimately, any pain that you go through, it took me two years to really come off this film. It's a new reality, but I don't live with the torment of knowing about something and not doing anything about it.

I gave everything I had. I have three children and I wouldn't hesitate to jump in the water. If they fell in a shark tank, I would never I wouldn't even think about it.

And what I couldn't live with is the thought that I could have done something and I didn't. That scares me more than anything. And so I feel like that this is awakening millions, if not billions of people, because this thing is going to be a lot bigger in Latin America. When my publicist told me that we did nearly five million dollars on a too cheap Tuesday night, I said, you've got to be kidding.

I don't think I've ever had a film do that much money three weeks out from the opening of a film. It just continues to grow. And I'm happy that people are now seeing this this evil. And but I want them to know that when they're listening to this, that, you know, I've often quoted Reagan. And this is a time for choosing. We have to choose good over evil.

We must. But that evil is powerless if the good are unafraid. So when you have Rolling Stone come out and says this is QAnon stuff, this is much of it is funneling people into conspiracy rabbit holes and QAnon communities. What is your reaction to that? Well, number one, we never knew what QAnon was when we watched when we were filming.

There's absolutely nothing. I don't know what that was. When a friend called me to this queue, I said and I said, no, I don't know what you're talking about. What's wrong with the letter Q? I mean, they talk about the letter Q more than they talk about the KKK. That's another letter, by the way. Right.

Yeah. But Q is from what I'm what I know is a they're against pedophilia. They're against transgender. They're against the trafficking. And it seems that parts of the media are for it. And so who's evil?

So people have to really think about it. I'm if I'm going to, you know, play a character in a movie, if I'm going to play that saying Ralphine's role in Schindler's List, I'm going to study the Nazis. That does not make me a Nazi. You know what I mean? Absolutely. He's got to play the bad guy. So if QAnon is evil, well, I'm going to investigate it. And I'm going to go I'm going to I'm going to say here's just like if traffickers are bad, wouldn't you want to figure out where traffickers hang out just in case your children are present? I would want to know how they think, how they function that way.

No predator is going to harm my child. So I would say that the public should look into what is perceived to be wicked and find out for themselves. But what what it's like is like the Wizard of Oz, where Toto runs over and pulls the green curtain and and they're saying, pay nothing, no attention to what is going on behind that green curtain. We have free speech.

We should be able to investigate it and understand why this is if Q is evil or not. And so but when we were filming, we knew nothing about it. We were just trying to do a film, a story that was inspiring, but had a lot of adventure in it.

But was incredibly dangerous, but very informative to the public. Did a great job, as you always do. And and so and the people are coming out and you're on a mission through this time.

Last question for you, Jim Caviezel. How's your basketball game? Are you still as passionate about the game as you ever were? I love I love the game.

I that's that's a good question. I have a friend of mine, Jan Furch, who's an incredible player out of Montana, lives in Spokane, and he's 54. And he I think he still dunks the ball.

I, I, I can't do that. I think it's the game is only fun as you really, really work at it. And he's never stopped. I kind of have kind of watch my knees a bit. So if you're Jim Caviezel was kind enough to be in the games to count with me when he when frequency came out, we talked about basketball. Good. Your brother was how much it meant to you and how much you learn from it to help you become this fantastic actor. Congratulations. Sound of Freedom. Go check it out. It's a real story with a great actor. Jim, thanks so much. Thank you, Brian.