There’s always movie money to be made by pandering to a particular audience, be it comic book and sci-fi fanboys and fangirls, foodies, this under-represented race or that disrespected cult.

Back when it was called 20th Century Fox, somebody thought a movie about that obsession the far right has with child trafficking conspiracies might make some money. They may not have fathomed that they’d be pretty much target-marketing to a cult, validating and normalizing thinking that sent one nut looking for kid-smuggling tunnels beneath a Washington, D.C. pizza parlor.

Cast it with Mel Gibson’s “Jesus” from “The Passion of the Christ,” get the director of a passionately anti-abortion drama to direct it, base it on whatever one former government agent turned vigilante says he experienced fighting this monstrous crime says he witnessed and stopped, and that’s money in the bank, right?

Disney bought out Fox studios and didn’t think much of that “red meat to Q-Anon” cynicism, and this 2018-2019 film sat on the shelf until Angel Studios took it over.

“Sound of Freedom” came out July 4, reaching an audience of the curious, but pre-sold to a whole subculture of child sex-trafficking obsessed fanatics, the people who throw “groomer” and “pedo” around like they have first hand experience of it. And it’s a surprise hit. It’ll have cleared $80 million at the box office by the end of the weekend, if not sooner. It’s reaching its audience.

With Caviezel asking viewers to “buy more tickets”in the closing credits, actual attendance for this thing is hard to gauge. This crowd is largely made up of folks sending regular cash payments to the former grifter in chief.

But that’s not enough for the faithful. The conspiracy-minded have seen conspiracies behind everything about this movie, its middling reception from critics, to the number of screens it’s showing on and the frequency of its showings.

Angel Studios and AMC Theaters had to issue a denial that they were manipulating showtimes, disrupting schedules and dropping screens showing the film in an effort to suppress the Q-Anon crowd’s first excuse to go to a movie since the first Bush administration.

Have you heard the one about nanobots? AMC and Snopes had to smack that one down, too. Not every ticket buyer to this movie is a crackpot, but an awful lot of QAnon morons are in every showing, it would seem.

Almost everything about this movie is wrapped in controversy and crackpottery. Angel Studios started life as a Mormon movie operation that would edit all the naughty words out of your DVDs. I guess they’re learning what happens when you pander to cranks living in their fake news hysteria bubble.

I guess AMC also figured out, a bit late, that when you pander to the ignorant, base instincts of the conspiratorial fringe audience, this is your reward.

The “Operation Underground Railroad” “hero” of the film, Tim Ballard, exposed to the harsh light of day for a heavily fictionalized (lies) version of his life and his career, has had to “step away” from his own organization. He’s a Glenn Beck-backed self-mythologizer, kids. He exaggerates his exploits, and the extent of the “global child-trafficking pedophile conspiracy” to sucker people into giving money. He’s just been sued for child abuse.

Yes, it’s really happening and yes, those CCTV videos of Third World (mostly) abductions seen in the movie are real. Yes, it’s an awful thing that should be stopped. No, it’s not blown up to become this massive, pandemic-level tragedy. They exaggerate to feed on the hysteria ginned up by OAN and Fox hype.

Star Jim Caviezel’s fringe beliefs and Q-Anon conspiracy-backing activities have been aired and discussed.

And on and on it goes.

Actors and filmmakers are tale-tellers by profession, and quite aside from his A-to-B acting range, Caviezel is no different from any other person who takes on guises for a living. I covered his speech at a megachurch in Orlando some years back, when he stood at the altar and wept about how playing Jesus in Mel Gibson’s hit, and controversial (anti-Semitic tropes) movie had “cost me my career.”

It was quite the performance. But Caviezel knew, as we all did the following week, that ABC was picking up the pilot to a new series by the hottest producer in Hollywood. Everything J.J. Abrams wanted to make he got to make back then, and “Person of Interest” was a sure thing the moment Caviezel was cast and Abrams & Co. put it in the can. Caviezel’s career wasn’t “cost” a damned thing. He lied, playing to his compliant (gullible) megachurch audience, selling them videos and his martyrdom.

Those of us who had the temerity to point out the movie’s shortcomings — leaving out the controversy and limiting our ridicule to the acting, the failed manipulations of what seems like an easy layup of a story — were immediately buried under hate mail and “pedo” comments from the deplorably unhinged.

I went back into my review and added links to a lot of the things mentioned here, just to make the review a “teachable moment.”

This movie’s box office take has been “gamed” by the fact that Caviezel urges viewers to leave the theater and buy more tickets to it. It’s a cheap “astro turf” way to make it appear its more popular than it is. I witnessed this first hand at a Danville, Va. cinema where I was about to watch “The Meg 2.” Elderly couple came out of “Freedom,” got back in line and bought more tickets. For nobody.

The dirt surrounding this picture keeps piling up. An actual sex trafficker of children was an “Angel” investor in it? Not at all surprised.

So no, I won’t be taking comments on this piece. I don’t have any interest in explaining what a movie review is to people who don’t know “opinion” writing when they see it because they’ve had that brainwashed out of them by the opinionated “news” liars (convicted, forced to pay out a $billion, and counting) at Fox.

All the”projecting” from confused, deranged people all worked up over what their Pied Pipers tell them to be worked-up over, while voting for actual pedophiles, groomers and traffickers (Trump, Roy Moore, Gym Jordan, Gaetz) and their enablers, all this fury over “Think of the children” when God forbid anybody suggest the sick, twisted gun-fetishists should be reined in to stop school shootings, who needs it?

If you’re gullible enough to believe the billboard I just saw, heralding “Sound of Freedom” as “The #1 Movie in America” on the weekend “Mission: Impossible” opened, the weekend after “Insidious: The Red Door” opened, etc., why waste keystrokes arguing with you?

There’s too much explaining of the basics to cranks who have no interest in learning anything.

My motto? Never try to reason with toddlers, drunks or conservative cranks. They’re irrational, quick to anger and in the end just wet their pants in fury.