Life well lived

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, June 30th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Two new adventure movies coming to theaters. One featuring a familiar hero and the other focused on a hero from real life.

Here’s WORLD’s arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino.

COLLIN GARBARINO: Debuting this weekend in theaters is Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. What should we make of 80-year-old Harrison Ford’s donning the fedora again? And did the world need one more Indiana Jones adventure?

JONES: It belongs in a museum!

PANAMA HAT: So do you! Throw him over the side!

I’m happy Lucasfilm decided to make one final Indiana Jones movie with Harrison Ford. 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a terrible disappointment. The franchise deserved a proper conclusion that honored its iconic legacy. And that’s what we get with this movie.

Dial of Destiny opens with a spectacular scene set during the last days of World War II, featuring a quite convincing digitally de-aged Ford fighting to keep Nazi soldiers from looting priceless antiquities.

Most of the movie is set in 1969, in which an elderly Dr. Jones feels the world has passed him by. Americans busily celebrate astronauts and excitedly look forward to the future of space. No one has time for Dr. Jones’ archeology and love of the past.

But when his goddaughter Helena, played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, shows up looking for a legendary device that can predict fissures in space and time, Indiana gets dragged into another globe-trotting adventure.

INDIANA JONES: Get in the pool!

HELENA: Why? How did they open the door?

JONES: Well, they didn’t get out the doors! Get in the pool!

Out of the five Indiana Jones movies, I rank this one in the middle. It’s not as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Last Crusade, but it’s much better than the other two.

The movie is rated PG-13 for violence and smoking, but it includes almost no strong language or sensuality. With Dial of Destiny, director James Mangold revives to the most endearing aspects of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The script, the score, and the visual language allude to key moments in the original. And it’s nice to see Indiana unlock some puzzles from the past.

INDIANA JONES: Under the moon, life lies at her feet.

Sure, the climax is a bit of a mess because Mangold couldn’t figure out how to land the plane. But nostalgic fans of the franchise will feel like both they and Indiana have finally come home after a lifetime of adventure.

If you’re interested in a true-life adventure with higher stakes, you might want to mark July 4th on your calendar. That’s the day Angel Studios’ Sound of Freedom debuts in theaters.

The movie dramatizes the story of Tim Ballard, founder of Operation Underground Railroad, who left his job with the Department of Homeland Security to rescue children from slavery.

Jim Caviezel plays Ballard, and the movie opens with his investigation of a child pornography ring. Tim has a good track record of arresting pornographers, but the darkness he’s exposed to starts to take its toll. One of his fellow officers wonders whether they’re doing enough.

CHRIS: Let me ask you something. How many pedophiles you caught?

TIM: As of today, 288. Not so bad.

CHRIS: How many kids you found?

The question haunts Tim, and he gets permission from his superiors to set up a sting operation which ends with the freeing of one small boy who had been stolen from his home in Honduras. The boy tells Tim about his sister who’s still enslaved, but the American bureaucracy tells Tim his investigation is over.

With his wife’s blessing, Tim heads to South America, hoping to track down the girl’s whereabouts.

KATHERINE: OK. So, you quit your job, and you go and rescue those kids.

Collaborating with both underworld contacts and local authorities, Tim devises another sting to capture enslavers and rescue children—this time on a much larger scale.

JORGE: Forget about what could happen to us. She could be killed too.

TIM: What if this was your daughter, Jorge?

Sound of Freedom is a well-crafted movie with an evenly paced script. The movie follows Tim’s single-minded quest to rescue one young girl, and it introduces a secondary problem, asking whether our current systems and resources are sufficient to address human trafficking.

The movie doesn’t belabor its faith-based roots. But it reminds viewers that human rights and dignity derive from our Creator.

VAMPIRO: Why you doing it?

TIM: Because God’s children are not for sale.

Caviezel brings a riveting intensity tinged with despair to Tim’s moral toughness. And the movie gets a boost from a strong secondary cast. Academy Award winner Mira Sorvino plays Tim’s wife, and the reliably entertaining Bill Camp plays one of Tim’s unsavory allies with both humor and sadness.

VAMPIRO: When God tells you what to do, you cannot hesitate.

The movie boasts high production values, with much of the filming done on location in Colombia. The beauty and the poverty of the setting seem a fitting metaphor for the children’s innocence and the wickedness they’re trapped in.

The movie is rated PG-13 for a couple of instances of profanity and heavy subject matter. Sound of Freedom avoids graphic depictions, but merely talking about sexual abuse against children makes for a disturbing film. Sensitive viewers will probably want to steer clear, but this is a story that needs to be told.

TIM: And everyday, ordinary people don’t want to hear it. It’s too ugly for polite conversation.

Sound of Freedom is a wake up call, reminding Americans of the evil that’s perpetrated both inside and outside our borders.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

EICHER: If you're interested in more reviews and entertainment news in your inbox, subscribe to Collin’s weekly newsletter at wng.org/newsletters. It’s called The Muse.

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