The opening scene introducing us to the two kids and how they were kidnapped by the talent scout was extremely effective. Chilling and heart-wrenching when you see the pictures being taken and the dad frantically searching for his kids. Kudos to the actress for the talent scout lady, because by the end of it I hated her character the most. I was surprised to find out thanks to the ending footage which showed the actual raid that she was based on a real person.
Like I said above, the opening was a bit rushed, but there's a lot of good stuff in there. The sequences of Tim Ballard being forced to watch child porn for his agency and describe what happens in the videos for the purposes of documenting evidence were soul-crushing and really made you understand why someone would be driven to want to see actual justice done for the kids. I think spending more time on this routine, showing him documenting evidence and the effect it's taking on his home life with his own family, would've made his ultimate decision to go rogue more effective. I also wish the movie had given more screentime to his family since, according to the end messages, his decision to go rogue was in large part inspired by his wife. That isn't in the movie, sadly, and I think it would've helped.
The middle chunk of the movie is probably where most of the tonal issues are for me. The middle part is about Tim trying to arrange a deal with a bunch of reformed cartel guys to stage a fake sex hotel in order to draw in some of the local traffickers, and it reminded me a lot of Argo, where you have an agent trying to undertake this serious mission with a really out-there scheme as cover. There's a couple intentionally funny scenes in there of them planning all of this, with Tim pretending to just be a rich drunk American pedophile in the meetings, but it doesn't quite gel well with his earlier appearances in the movie. It could've been developed a bit better, but what was there was pretty fun. The problem I guess is that sometimes the movie feels like it's trying to be a zany, over-the-top, "you won't believe this was based on a real event" type of movie (Argo, The Big Short, Wolf of Wall Street, etc) but it doesn't work well with the more grounded, soul-crushing reality of child sex trafficking that the movie is trying to show. It's never jarring enough that it feels disrespectful and never gives you tonal whiplash, but it's something I noticed.
Props to the guy playing the reformed cartel guy. His monologue about why he's deciding to help Tim was really dark stuff. He did good, even if he does look a lot like Ethan Ralph, complete with his love of cigars.
