Movie: Looking at Heaven: The Life of St. José Sánchez Del Rio

I’m not much of a movie goer, but when my Adult Faith Formation class at my parish decided to skip our regular Monday meeting for a movie I didn’t have much of a choice.  So we canceled the class a couple of Mondays ago to attend a movie at one of our local theaters dedicated to Catholic Movie Night.  I am not sure if Catholic Movie Night is a once per month event or ad hoc, but they scheduled a Catholic movie for this particular Monday night, and it wouldn’t be in the theaters otherwise.  The move was Looking at Heaven: The Life of St. José Sánchez Del Rio, the life of a teenage Catholic martyr during the The Cristero War in Mexico during the 1920s. 

The Cristero War was a rebellion/civil war within Mexico during a time the Civil Government tried to squash and eliminate the Catholic faith.  Churches were closed.  Priests were hunted down and killed if caught celebrating Mass.  The rebellion became known as the Cristo Rey (Christ the King) movement and their exclamation was Viva Cristo Rey!  A more comprehensive movie of the rebellion was produced in 2012 titled For Greater Glory.  

Looking at Heaven has a narrower story of a young man, José Sánchez del Río, who at the age of fourteen joined the Cristero movement, was captured, tortured, and martyred for his faith.  The movie is in Spanish with subtitles, but I will say I had no problem following the dialogue.  José came from a devout Catholic family.  His two older brothers had already joined the Cristero soldiers, and when at the point that José could no longer tolerate the persecution toward Catholics joined himself.  The priest who led the Catholic group to the movie theater said the movie depiction was very true to the known facts.

Let’s go through a couple of video clips here.  First there is a biographical clip on the life of José Sánchez del Río.

 

Next is the Trailer for the movie.

 

Finally if you want to see the whole two hour movie, it’s currently available on YouTube. 

 

Edit: It was taken down.  Look for it every so often, you may find it back.

The movie is beautifully produced.  The musical score was so perfect.  The acting outstanding, especially given the young actors.  The cinematography was beautiful, with interesting close in scenes and lavish outdoor vistas.  And finally the story was wonderfully rendered.  It was a beautiful, heart moving movie.  I highly recommend it.  Five stars!

 

Movie Review: Sound of Freedom

What is disheartening is that this movie has become controversial.  It shouldn’t be.  The subject of the movie is the growing social ill of human sex trafficking, especially child trafficking, and the movie does a wonderful job of engaging the viewer in the heart wrenching plight of innocent children.  And while that sounds very didactic, the movie is hardly just informative.  It is framed in the story of an action suspense, a mostly true life action suspense based an ex-Homeland Security agent named Tim Ballard whose mission in life has been to expose and entrap human traffickers.  Ballard is played by Jim Caviezel, famously known as the actor who played Jesus in Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ.  Here is the movie’s trailer.

 

The opening establishes the premise.  Two children of a simple Honduran father are lured into a fake talent contest and instead of the glamour and riches of modeling are abducted and enslaved.  At some point they are sold off, the boy, Miguel, to traffickers in Mexico and the girl, Rocio, to Columbia where they are both sexually exploited.

The story moves then into three phases, each progressing into the heart of darkness of this evil.  The first is Ballard as Homeland Security agent apprehending a pedophile through the internet and entrapping him to provide a child which turns out to be Miguel.  Rescued, Miguel tells Ballard of his sister, and Ballard through detective work finds she has been sold to parties in Columbia.  He convinces his boss to send him to Columbia to investigate the racket, and in the second phase comes across the criminal operation.  In time with little to show for it, Ballard is called back home.  In a fine scene—which the real Tim Ballard says really happened—he calls his wife to tell her his mission is ended unless he quit his job and go rogue, expecting his wife to implore him to come home.  The opposite happens; his wife implores him in the other direction, exhorting him to do whatever it takes to save those children. 

In the sleazy sections of whatever city in Columbia he is in (Bogotá? Cartagena? I can’t remember) he meets a seedy ex-convict who despite his otherwise morally ambiguous character is also personally convicted against child sex trafficking.  He goes by the nickname, Vampiro, and is played by Bill Camp.  The real Tim Ballard said that the Vampiro character really existed but went by the nickname Batman, and for copy write reasons the movie had to change the name.  Vampiro has perhaps the central line of the entire movie.  In a bar scene while swigging down liquor, he explains to Ballard why he risks his life and trying to save these children, “When God tells you what to do, you cannot hesitate.” 

And so the two, Ballard and Vampiro, conduct a sting operation of a local group of sex traders and free some 54 children.  To their surprise, Rocio was not with the freed children.  They learn that she had been sold to a drug cartel that had encamped a remote section of Columbia, and this leads to the third phase of the story.  With the help of the Columbian government, Ballard ventures into the encampment disguised as a doctor where he discovers a multitude of slaves picking coca leaves for the production of cocaine.  Here he comes to the heart of evil where sex and drugs and money and the enslavement of human beings for their ends meet.  Rocio is indeed there, and I will leave it at that to not give an ending spoiler away. 

Caviezel is masterful as Tim Ballard.  The conviction of his heart progresses with each step, and it is evident in every facial expression.  Bill Camp is convincing as a morally ambiguous crook whose heart has been changed with the discovery of the child sex trade. 

There are a lot of interviews with Caviezel and with Ballard and together.  Some of them are too lengthy.  I wanted to introduce you to the real Tim Ballard.  Of the shorter ones to share, I thought this one with Ben Shapiro was the most comprehensive for just over nine minutes.

 

One last thing, when you do see the movie, take handkerchiefs.  Your eyes will be wet for half the movie.