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.
Trade (2007)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:22
Fresh:5
Rotten:17
Average Rating:4.6/10
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: Crime/Conspiracy, , Kidnapping And Missing Persons, Thriller, Rape, Exploitation, 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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Reviews for Trade
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.
Other than showing how a trafficking pipeline might work, Trade is a total misfire, a strange attempt at making a buddy movie featuring a morose Kevin Kline and a 17-year-old Mexican boy looking for his kidnapped sister.
The story of the victims on the road is harrowing, but the tale of the kind cop and the teenager with an attitude is a string of big brother clichés.
This mostly effective dramatization paints a suitably ugly picture of the dehumanizing depths people are willing to go for money.
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.
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.
The movie often seems to be exploiting as much as illuminating the problem.
Human trafficking is an awful societal issue, and Trade happens to be an awful movie about human trafficking.
Jose Rivera’s highly improbable and sensationalized screenplay leaves its actors no room for authenticity. Marco Kreuzpaintner directs with commendable energy, but squanders Daniel Gottschalk’s gold-dust-strewn images on hyperventilating voyeurism.
Comes off like TV-movie sensationalism, sidetracked by distracting backstories and hard-to-swallow plot twists.
It gets high marks for its lofty intentions, but it is only mediocre as a thriller and is clunky in its presentation.
Trade's fictional drama is [hard] to believe, and impossible to justify.
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.
As a movie, Trade is so-so, but as an exposé of how the new globalized industry of sex trafficking really works, it's a disquieting, eye-opening bulletin.
Latest News for Trade
September 27, 2007:
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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...
September 20, 2007:
Critical Consensus: Chuck is No Good, Sydney White is No Fairy Tale, Eastern Exceeds Promises
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. ![]()
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. ![]()
More...
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 15% 15% | The Ugly Truth |
| 98% 98% | Up |
| 36% 36% | G.I. Joe: The Rise of … |
| 52% 52% | The Taking of Pelham 1… |
| 45% 45% | Ice Age: Dawn of the D… |
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 36% 36% | Angels & Demons |
| 68% 68% | Funny People |
| 25% 25% | Four Christmases |
| 45% 45% | Shorts |
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