Opinion ‘Sound of Freedom’ puts the adrenaline hormone to work

Leave it to gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson to drop an obscure theory about oxidized adrenaline’s alleged psychedelic properties that, 52 years later, is being connected by QAnon conspiracists to a blockbuster movie about child sex trafficking. Deep breath.

Thompson, who died in 2005 and arranged for his ashes to be shot into the sky from a tower at his Colorado home, doubtless would delight in these developments, which even his fertile, drug-enhanced imagination could not have foreseen. That said, based on my decades-ago reading of his 1971 masterpiece, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” he was surprised by nothing, especially regarding the human capacity for self-delusion and mass confusion.

The breakout indie movie “Sound of Freedom” is itself a curiosity. A low-budget film made five years ago, it sat on a shelf until it was recently picked up by Angel Studios. Since its release on July 4, this tale of child sex trafficking starring Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in “The Passion of the Christ,” has earned $100 million. Its crowdfunded popularity is based in part on a unique marketing campaign and on its embrace by QAnon and high-profile conspiracy theorists, including Stephen K. Bannon and former president Donald Trump.

QAnon, a virtual “organization” with an extremist ideology led by the anonymous “Q” (purportedly a government agent who shares “scoops” for credulous followers), has advanced the idea that Hollywood and political elites traffic children so they can consume the children’s blood along with adrenochrome (oxidized adrenaline) for its “anti-aging properties.” Check.

Myths surrounding adrenochrome’s life-extending properties took shape long ago when a couple of scientists tested the hormone for its possible hallucinatory properties and a theoretical connection to schizophrenia. The scientific community has debunked their research, but reality and facts never deter conspiracists. For the record, adrenochrome can be synthesized in a lab. There’s no need for live bodies.

Nevertheless, even Caviezel, who has spoken several times to QAnon audiences, endorses the idea that adrenochrome is a driving force behind the demand for children. In an interview with Bannon, he said, “The whole adrenochrome empire. This is a big deal.”

It’s a shame that QAnon and others from the unhinged right have attached themselves to a film that tackles a deeply troubling subject and is based, if loosely, on a true story — and is otherwise worth seeing. In the real-life story, Department of Homeland Security special agent Tim Ballard decided in 2013 that he’d rather rescue children in sex slavery than exclusively pursue traffickers. He quit his job and traveled to South America, where he built a team of other former government operators, one of whom, “Batman,” previously laundered money for drug cartels but eventually felt called by God to fight child sex trafficking after he spent the night with a prostitute who he later learned was 14 years old.

“God’s children are not for sale” is the film’s theme — and in both art and life, Ballard and Batman have dedicated their lives to making it true. Together, they hustle the hustlers, creating elaborate scams to catch the bad guys and liberate the children, mostly girls. The phrase “sound of freedom” comes from the makeshift music the children create when they are freed. I leave the story here so you can see for yourself what all the fuss is about. I should warn you that I never watch a movie as a critic. I enter the theater and allow the director (in this case, Alejandro Monteverde) to have his or her way with me. (“Barbie” could easily be the exception, but I don’t intend to find out.)

“Sound of Freedom” had me at the first camera shot as it zoomed toward a window and a little girl sitting on her bed, tapping out a mesmerizing rhythm on a cardboard box top and singing with the voice of an angel. Immersed as I became in the story, there was no ignoring the extreme typecasting of the villains, to the point of caricature. But the audience didn’t mind. Trump would have imagined the creeps and criminals exactly as he likely sees migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

It’s a hard movie to watch and is not for children. In the North Carolina cineplex where I saw it — midday and midweek — the audience was decidedly gray-haired. This might be generally true of the time slot, but most also seemed like folks who might own a MAGA hat, if I may indulge in a bit of typecasting of my own. I decided against interviewing any of my fellow moviegoers as I had intended. As they slowly left the theater, their drawn faces and hollow eyes told me this was not the time. I felt the same way.

Those who remained through the credits were treated to a short message from Caviezel, basically a plea to buy tickets for others. Ticking off statistics about the child sex trade — a $150 billion sphere that has surpassed the illegal trades in drugs and guns — he suggested that the film could do for child sex trafficking what Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” did for slavery.

Marshaling the forces of good to combat evil isn’t the worst incentive for a movie. But this one’s message should stand without the claptrap from the Q-man (who, I suspect, might be a mad scientist investigating the anatomy of conspiracy and the suckers who take him seriously). Thompson famously said, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro,” and “it never got weird enough for me.” He should have stuck around.