The opening credits of Trade roll with an aerial camera swooping over scorched hillsides and across the sprawling, seething mass of Mexico city, while Spanish singer Bebe chants out her post-punk anthem, “Malo.” The sequence underscores the intimidating challenge facing Jorge (Cesar Ramos), a penny-ante street hustler frantically searching for his younger sister after she’s kidnapped by a sex slave ring.
The movie opens as two pretty Polish girls get off a plane in Mexico city, believing they are heading to a US modeling agency. But the “agency” turns out to be a front for slave traffickers, and as soon as the girls land, their passports are taken and they’re ushered to a van by seedy escorts.
Instantly suspicious, one girl is hit by a car trying to escape, while Veronica (Alicja Bachleda-Curus) is spirited to a filthy apartment where she’s raped by one of her captors. There she meets Jorge’s sister, 13-year-old Adriana (Paulina Gaitan), kidnapped while riding a bicycle Jorge gave her for her birthday. The two girls help each other survive, as coyotes smuggle them along clandestine routes in a nightmarish ordeal.
In his desperate search, Jorge eventually hooks up with Ray (Kevin Kline), an off-duty fraud detective from Texas. Ray and Jorge make an unlikely team in the hunt for Jorge’s sister, bolstered as much by fortuitous luck as by Jorge’s guts.
The movie is buoyed by exceptionally strong performances by Bachleda-Curus and Gaitan, and by the gritty realism of their plight. Marco Pérez also turns in an excellent, understated performance as the coyote Manuelo, both ruthless and ridden with guilt, and Kate del Castillo is wonderful as the utterly amoral slave trader, Laura.
German director Marco Kreuzpaintner uses Jose Rivera’s (Diarios de Motocicleta) screenplay to lift the movie beyond a myopic ordeal of two girls to hint at the larger global problem. But the number of coincidences necessary for the storyline undermine the plot’s complexity, and hackneyed writing makes it too easy for audiences to pigeonhole sexual slavery as just another problem caused by those “f***ing gringos.” Ramos is engaging when he’s allowed to be natural, but Kline is so restrained his performance is on an emotional par with warm milk.
Trade would be a mediocre gambit if it weren’t for the vital importance of the subject matter. The US State Department estimates between 600,000 – 800,000 people are trafficked across borders every year, though some reports put the estimate as high as 4 million.
The movie has a social conscience, and tries to use it. (Trade’s website even lists several organizations where people can get involved and take action.) And that, plus the two stellar performances of its lead actresses, put it on the must see list.
- Grade: B
- Rating: R
- Running time: 119 minutes
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
