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Trade

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Trade (2007)

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Reviews Counted:67

Fresh:19

Rotten:48

Average Rating:4.8/10

Consensus: 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.

Rated: R [See Full Rating] for disturbing sexual material involving minors, violence including a rape, language and some drug content

Runtime: 2 hrs

Genre: Kidnapping And Missing Persons, Thriller, Exploitation, , Crime/Conspiracy, Rape, Theatrical Release, Crime

Theatrical Release:Sep 28, 2007 Limited

Box Office: $118,086

Synopsis: At once soft-hearted and hard-edged, TRADE provides a compassionate look at an ugly world. In Mexico City, men kidnap13-year-old Adriana (Paulina Gaitan) with the intent of selling her virginity to... At once soft-hearted and hard-edged, TRADE provides a compassionate look at an ugly world. In Mexico City, men kidnap13-year-old Adriana (Paulina Gaitan) with the intent of selling her virginity to the highest bidder. Young Polish beauty Veronica (Alicja Bachleda) is held captive by the same men, and they threaten her young son across the ocean. As the criminals mistreat their victims, Veronica is Adriana's only solace as she is taken farther and farther away from home. Meanwhile, Adriana's older brother, Jorge (Cesar Ramos), begins to track his sister across the Mexican border into Texas and through the United States. On his mission, he runs into a Texas cop named Ray (Kevin Kline) who agrees to help him without ever really saying why. TRADE isn't escapist fare: it's a socially conscious film that doesn't flinch from the most painful of details about the sex trade. There's rape, pedophilia, and suicide, and the film doesn't look away or glance over the horrors. This is German director Marco Kreuzpainter's first film on these shores, but he works like an assured veteran. After working for decades in the film industry, Kline is often most highly praised for his work in comedies such as DAVE and A FISH CALLED WANDA, but he's quite adept in this serious drama. Young actors Ramos and Gaitan are making their major feature debut with TRADE, but they both communicate the fear and frustration of their characters with remarkable skill. [More]

Starring: Kevin Kline, Cesar Ramos, Alicja Bachleda, Paulina Gaitan

Starring: Kevin Kline, Cesar Ramos, Alicja Bachleda, Paulina Gaitan, Kate Del Castillo, Anthony Crivello, Zack Ward

Director: Marco Kreuzpaintner

Director: Marco Kreuzpaintner
Screenwriter: Jose Rivera
Story: Peter Landesman, Jose Rivera
Producer: Roland Emmerich, Roslyn Heller
Composer: Jacobo Lieberman, Leonardo Heiblum
Studio: Lions Gate Films

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Release:

Jan 29, 2008

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Reviews for Trade

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1 - 20 (sorted by comments)
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This involving film is weakened by a script that tries to create a formulaic thriller out of an important subject matter.

Full Review Source: Shadows on the Wall | comment 1 Comment
12/12/08
Rich Cline
Rich Cline
Shadows on the Wall

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: Hollywood.com | comment Comment
09/29/07
Hollywood.com
N/R

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch | comment Comment
09/29/07
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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.

Full Review Source: Independent | comment Comment
12/12/08
Independent

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.

Full Review Source: Urban Cinefile | comment Comment
07/29/09
Andrew L. Urban
Andrew L. Urban
Urban Cinefile

Without making a message movie, the filmmakers have shed light on a serious yet underappreciated sociopolitical issue.

Full Review Source: Boxoffice Magazine | comment Comment
09/28/07
Annlee Ellingson
Annlee Ellingson
Boxoffice Magazine

Trade is a dreadfully hollow film, empty of everything except pretension and self-importance posing as art.

Full Review Source: Colorado Springs Gazette | comment Comment
02/28/08
Brandon Fibbs
Brandon Fibbs
Colorado Springs Gazette

Treats sex slavery with roughly the same amount of tact and complexity with which the Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle Hard Target treated homelessness.

Full Review Source: FilmStew.com | comment Comment
10/02/07
Brett Buckalew
Brett Buckalew
FilmStew.com

Trade plays like a slightly more culturally aware episode of Walker, Texas Ranger.

Full Review Source: eFilmCritic.com | comment Comment
09/27/07
Brian Orndorf
Brian Orndorf
eFilmCritic.com

In addition to one-dimensional characters, the plot is unconvincing, with contrivance heaped upon contrivance.

Full Review Source: Film Journal International | comment Comment
09/28/07
Bruce Feld
Bruce Feld
Film Journal International

A jarring mess of a movie, one that ends up seeming like no more than a particularly heavy episode of the CBS kidnapping drama Without a Trace.

Full Review Source: Filmcritic.com | comment Comment
09/20/07
Chris Barsanti
Chris Barsanti
Filmcritic.com

What ultimately tips the scales is its determination to avoid sentimentality.

Full Review Source: St. Paul Pioneer Press | comment Comment
10/06/07
Chris Hewitt (St. Paul)
Chris Hewitt (St. Paul)
St. Paul Pioneer Press

A 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.

Full Review Source: Associated Press | comment Comment
12/03/07
Christy Lemire
Christy Lemire
Associated Press
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

By introducing silly elements into a serious endeavor, the filmmakers undercut their own movie. In the end, we're watching a somewhat exploitative movie about exploitation.

Full Review Source: Washington Post | comment Comment
09/27/07
Desson Thomson
Desson Thomson
Washington Post
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

The film's horrific and important subject matter is distilled into a lackluster lump of generic buddy-movie/road-picture components.

Full Review Source: Hollywood Reporter | comment Comment
01/30/07
Duane Byrge
Duane Byrge
Hollywood Reporter

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.

Full Review Source: Slant Magazine | comment Comment
10/19/07
Ed Gonzalez
Ed Gonzalez
Slant Magazine

Takes forever to get anywhere and the ridiculous ending doesn't make it worth the journey.

Full Review Source: ComingSoon.net | comment Comment
09/25/07
Edward Douglas
Edward Douglas
ComingSoon.net

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.

Full Review Source: Sky Movies | comment Comment
12/12/08
Elliott Noble
Elliott Noble
Sky Movies

Ill-conceived and executed by German helmer Kreuzpaintner, Trade fails on every level, as expose of sex traffickers, as commentary on US ongoing illegal immigration debate, as portrait of innocent children violated by crime, and even as seedy thriller.

Full Review Source: EmanuelLevy.Com | comment Comment
08/19/07
Emanuel Levy
Emanuel Levy
EmanuelLevy.Com

Tells the story with gritty realism, but waters it down with laughable melodrama.

Full Review Source: EricDSnider.com | comment Comment
09/27/07
Eric D. Snider
Eric D. Snider
EricDSnider.com
 
 
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Latest News for Trade

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September 02, 2007: 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. Opens in new window
More...

September 02, 2007: Trade diverts its enormously disturbing subject matter into its own apolitical comfort zone, where the reality is clear but resolutions clouded over. Opens in new window
More...

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