Stream it now Trade 2007

 

SO real and so evil, the close proximity of our civilisation to its dark side will not be better depicted in a box-office-financable film.
The juxtaposition of the american middleclass who care more for their cats than for their children, whose insatiable appetite for alternative and extreme diversion to counter the blandness of their culture is expertly presented.
Not without flaws, and perhaps (amazingly) lacking punch at the end. Loose ends too. But a film which had to be made and should be watched.

Predictable and interesting, a glaring look at the perversity of the trade

Trade - a story of a poor Mexican youth who is forced to act when his kid sister is taken by sex traffickers and smuggled into the USA. You have the feeling this is based upon some true events and the story is shocking and disturbing. Not on par with The City of God but well made and paced, great acting and sometimes uncomfortable and frustrating to watch (as true events often are) it is a great movie and well worth watching.

This is probably oneof the dumbest movie's I have ever seen. The dialogue was horrible, the actions and choices the characters made weren't by any means natural, and the worst of all the story had more holes in it than swiss cheese. The writer had no idea what he was writing about. Here are some examples:
1. When the brother is chasing after his sister in his friends car, they get all the way from Mexico City to Juarez. That is a 14 hr drive. They show them getting there so quickly and never stopping for gas.
2. When they are talking to the "border patrol" and pay them to get across, you wouldn't be paying the Mexican side to get across, you'd have to pay the U.S.
3. Here is the biggest mistake. When they sneak across and get caught, and then in the same damn day, try to sneak across again, you wouldn't be released from custody taht quickly. Secondly, you wouldn't be released back into the custody of the kidnapper, you would be thoroughly checked out and then sent back home. And third, why the hell didn't they tell the police?
4. When the Polish girl makes her phone call was the most ridiculous scene in the movie. Why didn't she go to the police? And secondly, theres no way you can make a collect call to Poland as quickly as she did.
5. There is no way you can get to New Jersey as fast as they did.
6. Why did the cop let the boy drive. There are checkpoints in the U.S. I doubt the boy would've gotten to New Jerse without being stopped. And also, how did he even know where he was going if the cop went to sleep?
7. Actually this is the dumbest part in the movie. When they are purchasing the boys sister, do you mean to tell me that only two people run that whole damn operation? That when they drive the cop to the house, they dont blindfold him?
This movie was so dumb, I only finished it because it became some what amusing t spot all the stupidity in the story telling.

I really enjoyed this movie as it hits a SERIOUS issue that hasn't been covered very well in the media. There were some corny parts between the boy and Kevin Kline...but, all around the movie was well put together and was quite the eye opener. It's scary to think this stuff happens everyday and not much is done about it....hopefully, this movie will make somewhat of a difference.

Trade is a total train wreck of a movie. I say "train wreck" because it's a very helpful way of describing it. It starts out stumbling, yet you feel like it still has hope to get back on track... but no. It keeps falling off its rails, and just when you don't think it can get more disastrous, it ends so catastrophically that you almost wonder how the filmmakers didn't get a slight urge to even TRY to somehow curb the chaos that permeates this crapfest.

A lot of people are convinced that the mere fact that a movie deals with an important or controversial issue or explores a troubling subject that has caused tragedy for many people in the real world automatically makes it a good piece of cinema. If its intentions are good, then it must be good, right? Well, I'm not even positive that this occasionally exploitative film has good intentions, but more on that later. The point is, the fact that the filmmakers choose to make a movie about a socially-relevant or complex issue that we should be aware of is NOT, in itself, justification to immediately give credit to a film. It's all in the execution, and the sad thing is that this seems like an obvious fact, but a lot of people are clearly unaware of this.

Heck, I could choose to sit down right now and write a script for a film that depicts the issue of starvation in, say, an African country. It's a pressing issue, something we should all do something about, people are suffering and dying because of it, and it sure sounds like I have good intentions in having decided to write a script for a movie about that... but that means nothing. In order to be considered great, the film I've written must rattle the viewer emotionally or get to him/her in a way that most films don't. It must feature 100% believable characters (carried by actors and actresses who give deft performances), and it must be free of contrivances. In order to be considered just good, the film should have all these elements, but to a lesser degree, perhaps a few contrivances or plot holes or lackings in performances, but nothing that insults the viewer's intelligence. In order to be considered so-so, the movie would succeed at some of these things, yet not fare as well in other areas. And finally, to be considered bad (yet not bottom-of-the-barrel bad), the film must fail on the majority of these things, yet still feature a few moments that at least make it okay for you to sit through it and not feel the need to stop watching it... or to destroy the DVD for that matter.

Trade doesn't fall under any of the above categories in terms of its level of quality. It is manipulative as hell, unbearably simple-minded and stereotypical in its depiction of more than one group of people. The only fun thing about it is that you could rent it and then play a drinking game in which you take a shot every time something contrived happens. In fact, it's a good idea because it means you'll probably pass out or be busy throwing up way before the last third and won't have to endure the climax of the film which manages to suck all the possible tension out of a potentially suspenseful conclusion, and instead is nothing but laughably ridiculous. For those who haven't seen this movie, it may sound cruel for me to suggest playing a drinking game with a film about a subject like this one, but when you see the outrageously insulting treatment that the filmmakers give the subject, you might change your mind about who the cruel party is.

People talk a lot about how characters in bad horror movies are often really dumb because they run up the stairs instead of out the front door when a killer is chasing them or they don't just call the police when they should, etc. Well, I'll tell you right now that the average dimwitted character in horror movies is 50 times smarter than every character in this film, particularly the two kidnapped girls that the film focuses on. I'm trying not to spoil anything (even though you seriously shouldn't see this movie), but there is a moment in which they actually manage to escape from their captors, and the circumstances in which they get caught again is an insult to the intelligence of any viewer. If an 8-year-old watches this movie, even he/she will be severely confused as to why the girls don't run towards the large crowd of people when the approaching van is still so far away. It's ludicrous, and you have to see it to believe it (but, like I said, you shouldn't).

It makes me sick trying to even think of ways to describe how terrible the final 20 minutes of this film are. First of all, there's the online bidding scene, which somehow manages to be completely lacking in tension. I still have no idea how they pulled that off. Oh, that reminds me, a sidenote: the trailer for this film is deceptive, but in a way that is worse than most deceptive trailers. The trailer features the online bidding scene and then immediately ends with a shot of one of the girls saying "You pay for this", which, of course, seems like a spoiler because it looks like they're telling you that they succeeded in buying her and thus were able to save her. But the thing is that that line ("You pay for this") is not only uttered by a girl who is NOT the one they're trying to save in the online auction, it is also taken completely out of context, from an earlier scene (which, by the way, is yet another in the long list of ludicrous moments in the film). What's funny is that this spoils the ending, yet it doesn't even do it with a clip that is relevant to the ending, but it STILL spoils it (though, to be fair, by the time you get to the ending if you're unfortunate enough to do so, you'll already see it coming 100 miles away).

Then we come to the "showdown" in the New Jersey house of the woman in charge of the operation. You'll have a really hard time keeping yourself from laughing when you hear what the woman wants Kevin Kline's character to do right before he leaves the house with the girl and the way that he wants him to prove that he did it. Finally, the very last scene of the film is jarring in an awkward way, ambiguous in the message (if any) that it wishes to convey, and once again, contrived to an unbearable point, going way beyond merely insulting our intelligence. There's a limit to how much even the dumbest viewer can take and this movie shamelessly sprints through that line and goes way beyond it. In addition to all the lackings in the execution, the worthless script and the half-assed performances, the worst sin committed by this self-righteous film is that it thinks it deserves accolades simply because it has chosen an issue that is both pressing and tragic as the center of this heinous stinker of a story.

THIS MOVIE IS EXCELLENT! ! ! ! ! ! ! !. AS SOME MAY ALLREADY KNOW, IT'S ABDUCTION, HUMAN TRAFFICKING, SEX SLAVERY ECTS. TO BAD IT GOT SOME BAD REVIEWS, IT'S JUST THAT WHITE ANTI-IMMRGRANT AMERICA DOESN'T CARE OR WANT TO KNOW ABOUT ISSUES THAT PERTAIN TO REAL HUMAN SUFFERING ESPECIALY IF THEY ARE IMMIGRANTS, EVEN IF IT'S HAPPENING RIGHT IN THEIR FACE.

All i can say is: you cant always beleive what the critics have to say. I loved it.

I left the movie half way through and came back to find it a good exciting and action packed movie and I dont watch too many of them.. I recommend it even though i skipped the middle the ending was very good...

(** 1/2):

Pretty brutal but the film is effective in getting its point across. My only major problem is that some things are just a little too convenient and the ending feels rushed and out of nowhere. I feel more work on the script would have helped. If you want to see a far superior film on human smuggling/prostitution, try and find the film Lilya-4-Ever (it has not been released on DVD in the U.S., though).