They say that around Christmas 1977, when the Kenner toy house found itself unable to respond to the brutal demand for dolls at the expense of Star Wars, He devised a solution that was equal parts original and crazy. Children (or not so children) who wanted their Luke figure would receive the box, just that, with the promise that the doll would arrive in the future. Months passed and in all that time the desire disguised as craving only grew. Call “myth of the empty box.” It was demonstrated that, depending on the case, marketing is also part of the construction of the meaning of a film.
Sound of Freedom It is a good example of how an overly enthusiastic (or just excessively original) promotional campaign can serve both to make a film a phenomenon (it is already the most viewed independent film of the year) and to muddy the result to the point of exhaustion. Monteverde is filming a revenge movie, one of the old-fashioned ones that Tarantino likes so much. But it replaces the dirty and attractive immorality of the genre with a mountain of good feelings. Said like that, everyone agrees.
The problem is that to the staging that is as effective as it is elegant and the ability to carve threats out of the night, the director adds what is required by a script that certainly could be improved, riddled with unnecessary underlinings and clarifications. Not to mention the conflict that is generated between the story based on the real life of Tim Balard as a rescuer of children in the hands of pedophiles and the B-movie characterization of the characters (especially the villains). The conflict between the veristic will and the narrative close to the genre explotation short circuit a film literally drowned in its will to be liked, to change the world, to water every frame with good intentions.
And then, at the end and over the credits, there is Jim Caviezel and his talk empty box as profitable (it is clear that it has worked) as crazy. Trying to turn a film into an act of goodwill is debatable; Furthermore, turning it into a propaganda instrument to put an end to nothing more and nothing less than human trafficking in the world is already between daring and slightly inappropriate. When not impudent. Of the conspiracy statements empty head of Caviezel, better not to talk.
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