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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 source)
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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

Tremendously sincere but at times brutal drama.

Full Review Source: Austin Chronicle | comment Comment
10/06/07
Marrit Ingman
Marrit Ingman
Austin Chronicle

It labors under the delusion that it's this year's revelatory, eye-opening Maria Full Of Grace, when it's little more than a B-movie with an overwrought conscience.

Full Review Source: AV Club | comment Comment
09/28/07
Nathan Rabin
Nathan Rabin
AV Club

Human trafficking is an awful societal issue, and Trade happens to be an awful movie about human trafficking.

Full Review Source: Boston Globe | comment Comment
09/28/07
Wesley Morris
Wesley Morris
Boston Globe
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

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

Yes, a conventional documentary about sex slavery would probably be more illuminating. It would also be more unbearable.

Full Review Source: Capital Times (Madison, WI) | comment Comment
10/26/07
Rob Thomas
Rob Thomas
Capital Times (Madison, WI)

Such difficult subject matter requires a harder-edged delivery, but hopefully this accessible drama will therefore get its message across to a wider audience.

Full Review Source: Channel 4 Film | comment Comment
12/12/08
Jim Hall
Jim Hall
Channel 4 Film

The movie often seems to be exploiting as much as illuminating the problem.

Full Review Source: Chicago Reader | comment Comment
09/28/07
J. R. Jones
J. R. Jones
Chicago Reader

A nasty, vile business, made more slimy because director Marco Kreuzpaintner doesn't trust the intrinsic interest of his story, and pumps it up with chase details, close calls, manufactured crises, and gratuitous scenes.

Full Review Source: Chicago Sun-Times | comment Comment
09/28/07
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Chicago Sun-Times
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Trade's fictional drama is [hard] to believe, and impossible to justify.

Full Review Source: Chicago Tribune | comment Comment
09/27/07
Tasha Robinson
Tasha Robinson
Chicago Tribune

However lofty the film's intent, it's hard to ignore the flaws in its making nor the protagonist's own criminality relative to a captor's religious hypocrisy.

Full Review Source: Cinema Signals | comment Comment
08/10/07
Jules Brenner
Jules Brenner
Cinema Signals

Rarely has a message movie been as noxious ... manages to be not only contrived and culturally offensive, but also exploitative of the illicit practice it theoretically opposes.

Full Review Source: Cinematical | comment Comment
09/27/07
Nick Schager
Nick Schager
Cinematical

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

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

Equally involving yet hard to take.

Full Review Source: Contra Costa Times | comment Comment
09/28/07
Mary F. Pols
Mary F. Pols
Contra Costa Times

Trade needed to be the United 93 of the human trafficking crisis. It's closer to being the World Trade Center.

Full Review Source: Decent Films Guide | comment Comment
09/28/07
Steven D. Greydanus
Steven D. Greydanus
Decent Films Guide

Trade takes on a serious, under-addressed international crime against humanity in a style that is somewhere between TV melodrama and drive-in exploitation, undoing its obvious good intentions and some truly provocative moments.

Full Review Source: Detroit Free Press | comment Comment
09/28/07
Terry Lawson
Terry Lawson
Detroit Free Press
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

I was moved.

Full Review Source: Ebert & Roeper | comment Comment
10/01/07
Richard Roeper
Richard Roeper
Ebert & Roeper
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

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

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
 
 
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Latest News for Trade

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This week at the movies we have parenting quarterbacks (The Game Plan, starring The Rock), FBI agents (The Kingdom, starring Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner), lonely citizens... More...

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This week at the movies, we've got cursed couples (Good Luck Chuck, starring Dane Cook and Jessica Alba), a collegiate Snow White (Sydney White, starring Amanda Bynes), the... More...

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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