Patriot News Network
Health and Freedom Conference
April 16, 2021
Actor Jim Caviezel discusses his latest role in Sound of Freedom, a film that depicts Tim Ballard, a former Department of Homeland Security agent who quits his job to rescue children who’ve been sold into sex slavery in international human trafficking networks. Ballard also makes a brief videotaped appearance to discuss the project and his work.
Editor’s Note: Arlington Road was surely an uncommon Hollywood production in that it addressed “conspiratorial” subject matter, including false flag terror, blackmail by government agencies, the Patriot movement, and pedophilia, all in a not-so-thinly-veiled fashion. The film was developed in the shadow of Ruby Ridge, the Waco massacre, and the Murrah federal building bombing while also eerily anticipating the events of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent culture of paranoia and conspiracy the government response to those events helped shape. Arlington Road was also an artifact examined in James Tracy’s infamous Culture of Conspiracy class, which he taught as a tenured faculty member at Florida Atlantic University prior to being terminated for not reporting his protected speech to school officials posted on this personal blog .
Mike D’Angelo
A.V. Club
(May 15, 2018)
Calling Arlington Road an unsung summer blockbuster admittedly stretches that category’s definition. A political thriller in the Parallax View mold, the film did get a wide release (in July 1999), but it was made for a relatively low budget and boasted decidedly mid-level stars: Jeff Bridges, Tim Robbins, Joan Cusack, and Hope Davis.
Nobody likely expected a box-office bonanza. Still, it underperformed even by that metric, finishing sixth on its opening weekend (even though the only other studio film to bow that week was American Pie), and received largely mixed reviews. In today’s conspiracy-fueled climate, the commercial and critical fate of a movie as deftly engineered and deeply cynical as this one might well be very different.
Bridges plays Michael Faraday, a history professor still mourning his late wife, who’d worked for the FBI and been killed in a Waco-style standoff. Seeking a playmate for his young son, Faraday is happy to meet new neighbors Oliver and Cheryl Lang (Robbins and Cusack), as they have a boy around the same age.
Soon, however, Faraday begins to suspect that this seemingly ordinary, exceedingly friendly couple is harboring some sort of dark secret. Some of the personal information they impart doesn’t check out, and as Faraday starts snooping around and keeping tabs, he discovers more and more discrepancies and inexplicable behavior. Eventually, he concludes that the Langs are homegrown terrorists plotting an attack.
JFK is among the most important and historically accurate American feature films ever produced. Basing the screenplay on New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s book, On the Trail of the Assassins: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Murder of President Kennedy, and author Jim Marrs’ Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy, Oliver Stone’s masterpiece illustrates how deep state power mobilized to subvert Garrison’s investigation of Louisiana-based figures associated with the CIA and November 22, 1963 tragedy. This was a daring and heretofore unsurpassed effort in commercial filmmaking drawing broader historical and political attention to an event that remains obscure and misunderstood.
Yet in the lead up to the film’s release, criticism of Stone from the press and the director’s own Hollywood’s jet set intensified. Fearing continued attacks and potential excommunication from industry peers Stone eventually succumbed. He did so by claiming that JFK was not entirely factual but rather subjective and interpretive in nature–his personal “myth.”
