Based on Peter Landesman's controversial, 2003 New York Times Magazine article "The Girls Next Door," Marco Kreuzpainter's Trade is a grueling dramatic exposé about sexual trafficking, marred by an excess of contrivances littering Jose Rivera's screenplay. That the filmmakers ultimately steer their narrative in such a formulaic direction is a shame, because for a great deal of its running time, Trade is a riveting, viscerally disturbing film that admirably refrains from exploiting its subject matter for lurid effect.
According to U.S. State Department estimates, roughly 800,000 people are bought and sold by sex traffickers around the world yearly. The sex trade across the U.S.-Mexican border reportedly claims upwards of 10,000 annual victims, many of them poverty-stricken young women. Putting a very human face on these horrifying statistics, Trade opens in Mexico City, where Russian sex traffickers kidnap Adriana (Paulina Gaitan), the sheltered, 13-year-old little sister of Jorge (Cesar Ramos), a 17-year-old street thug. Fiercely protective of Adriana, Jorge goes after her kidnappers himself, tracking them across the border into rural Texas. Here, he forms an uneasy (and somewhat implausible) alliance with Ray (Kevin Kline), a retired police officer who lost his only daughter to sexual traffickers years ago. As they try to rescue Adriana before she's sold to the highest bidder via an Internet auction, she and fellow captive Veronica (Alicja Bachleda-Curus), a young Polish woman, try to escape their kidnappers.
Although Kreuzpainter (Summer Storm) thankfully doesn't dwell on the sordid elements of Rivera's narrative, Trade is nonetheless a relentlessly grim film that's very difficult to watch. The sexual traffickers' depraved indifference towards the young women and little boy they drug and/or beat into submission is shocking in its casual brutality. There are scenes in Trade that fill you with queasy dread, yet their apparent basis in cold hard fact, as reported by Landesman in his magazine piece, prevent them from coming across as sensationalistic or gratuitous.
However, Trade's dramatic credibility begins to diminish after Ray finds Jorge hiding in the trunk of his car. It's not the fault of the actors; Ramos and Kline play their roles with compelling urgency (though Kline does seem a bit miscast in a role tailor-made for Tommy Lee Jones). But their characters' actions sorely test our willingness to suspend disbelief, particularly as they race the clock (and drive cross-country) to save Adriana. Nor do the filmmakers sufficiently develop Ray's relationship with his wife (Linda Edmond), whom he phones constantly from the road, as it comes across as nothing but stock narrative filler.
Alternately gripping and frustrating, Trade is a regrettable disappointment.
— TIM KNIGHT
Based on Peter Landesman's controversial, 2003 New York Times Magazine article "The Girls Next Door," 