Trade (2007)
Average Rating: 4.8/10
Reviews Counted: 68
Fresh: 20 | Rotten: 48
With an exploitative style that seems more suited for TV shows like CSI, Trade's message about the reality of child exploitation is easily lost.
Average Rating: 4.6/10
Critic Reviews: 26
Fresh: 7 | Rotten: 19
With an exploitative style that seems more suited for TV shows like CSI, Trade's message about the reality of child exploitation is easily lost.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 26,917
My Rating
Movie Info
After his 13-year-old sister is abducted by sex traffickers, a determined Mexican teen travels from the barrios of Mexico City to a run-down stash house in New Jersey in a desperate attempt to rescue the frightened girl before she is swallowed whole by one of the criminal underworld's darkest secrets. Jorge's (Cesar Ramos) adolescent sister, Adriana (Paulina Gaitan), has been kidnapped and thrust into a lucrative underground trade in which young girls are bought and sold to the highest bidder.
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Cast
-
Kevin Kline
Ray Sheridan -
Cesar Ramos
Jorge -
Alicja Bachleda
Veronica -
Paulina Gaitan
Adriana -
Marco Pérez
Manuelo -
Linda Emond
Patty Sheridan -
Zack Ward
Alex Green -
Kate del Castillo
Laura -
Tim Reid
Hank Jefferson -
Pasha D. Lychnikoff
Vadim Youchenko -
Natalia Traven
Lupe -
Guillermo Iván
Alejandro -
Christian Vazquez
Moncho -
Jose Sefami
Don Victor -
Leland Pascual
Thai Boy -
Jorge Angel Toriello
Ten Year Old Boy -
Luz Itzel
Moncho's Girl -
Eren Zumaya
Lovesick Girl -
Norma Angelica
Lupe's Neighbor -
Kathleen Gati
Irina -
Anna Maria Horsford
Detective Martinez -
Anthony Crivello
Detective Henderson -
William Sterchi
American Tourist -
Mayahuel DelMonte
Woman at Door -
Kei-Kei Cadena
Brazilian Girl -
Lesly Ortega Del Rosal
Mexican Girl -
Fermín Martínez
Mexican Policeman #1 -
Julio Escalero
Mexican Policeman #2 -
John Wylie
Pedophile in Reeds -
Rio Alexander
Armed Man -
Maria Luisa Coronel
Old Mexican Shopkeeper -
J.D. Garfield
High School Spanish Tea... -
Aimee Lynn Chadwick
School Girl -
Matthew Timmons
El Paso Border Guard -
Bruce DeHerrera
Detention Center Guard ... -
Michael Carrillo
Detention Center Guard ... -
Dominick Chavez
Detention Center Guard ... -
Mike Hatfield
El Paso Police Officer -
Barbara Mayfield
Waitress in Diner -
Matthew McDuffie
Pedophile in Diner -
Rob DeBuck
Motorcycle Cop at Diner -
Grant Martin
Police Officer at Diner -
Boots Southerland
Van Owner at Diner -
Genia Michaela
Hotel Receptionist -
Ross Kelly
Young New Jersey Office... -
Jason Clarke
New Jersey State Troope... -
Aaron Lobato
New Jersey Officer -
Bo Greigh
First Deputy Texas -
Josh Berry
Second Deputy Texas -
Lena Baran
Natasha -
Larisa Eryomina-Wain
Veronica's Mother -
Elizabeth Leibel
Travel Agent -
Lisa Clugston
Sarah Buchanan -
Erika Clugston
Sarah's Daughter
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All Critics (69) | Top Critics (26) | Fresh (21) | Rotten (48) | DVD (3)
As cinema, 'Trade' is flawed: the script is functional and the dry characters are hemmed in by the machinations of an unremarkable plot.
Top CriticA documentary about sex trafficking might have been more powerful. Dramatizing the subject in this fashion, with a race-against-time road trip, breathless online bidding and a couple of different happy endings, simply cheapens it.
The filmmaker tries to keep the energy up and the audience engaged by incorporating stylistic touches from the Michael Bay 101 crib sheet, whirling the camera around characters in crisis and lacing scenes with hack guitar rock.
Grim, hard to take, and nightmare-producing, Trade is not for the faint of heart.
I was moved.
Trade has telegraphed the most sordid examples of the international child sex trade into a small, somewhat exploitative thriller.
A brutal, shattering story of child trafficking that is intended to deliver a sobering punch about the global human trafficking trade, Marco Kreutzpaintner's powerful drama is in fact based on investigative reports in the New York Times.
If only the whole matched the power and potency of the details. Masquerades as a searing exposé, but turns out to be a lurid and overwrought account.
Such difficult subject matter requires a harder-edged delivery, but hopefully this accessible drama will therefore get its message across to a wider audience.
This cockeyed odd-couple road movie is well-intentioned, but it comes perilously close to feeding off the crimes it condemns.
Is it possible to agree with what a film is saying while disliking the way it says it? Trade leaves no arm untwisted and no message unrammed.
Kline and the talented Gaitan do their best to engage on a human level, but ending with various sobering stats about the global sex trade only underlines the film's woefully misplaced dramatic emphasis.
Jose Rivera's script plays uneasily, as do some of the directorial flourishes: the shots of rose stems and caged birds are galumphingly emphatic at moments that need no underlining.
With terrific performances and strong direction throughout, this hard-hitting thriller delivers a powerful wake-up call.
This involving film is weakened by a script that tries to create a formulaic thriller out of an important subject matter.
Trade is a dreadfully hollow film, empty of everything except pretension and self-importance posing as art.
Just misses making its urgent point, which was surely the purpose of this emotionally stirring, troubling film, by turning up the excessively convoluted melodrama, and turning its eyes away from the sociopolitical issues that sex slavery thrives on.
Just misses making its urgent point, which was surely the purpose of this emotionally stirring, troubling film, by turning up the excessively convoluted melodrama, and turning its eyes away from the sociopolitical issues that sex slavery thrives on.
Yes, a conventional documentary about sex slavery would probably be more illuminating. It would also be more unbearable.
Trade has cojones for trying to lay the kind of political guilt trip it does on us with its sham aesthetics and lurid telenovela-writ-large storyline.
Tremendously sincere but at times brutal drama.
What ultimately tips the scales is its determination to avoid sentimentality.
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Foreign Titles
- Trade - Willkommen in Amerika (DE)
