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Trade
EMAILPRINTRoadside Attractions
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 22 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 9 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Crime | Drama
Written by:
Peter Landesman (article & story)
Jose Rivera (& story)
Directed by: Marco Kreuzpaintner
Release Date:
Theatrical: September 28, 2007
DVD: January 29, 2008
Running Time: 119 minutes, Color
Origin: Germany / USA
Summary
RATING: R for disturbing sexual material involving minors, violence including a rape, language and some drug content
Starring Kevin Kline, Alicja Bachleda-Curus, Paulina Gaitan, Kathleen Gati, Pavel Lychnikoff, Anthony Crivello, Linda Emond, and Zack Ward
When 13-year-old Adriana is kidnapped by sex traffickers in Mexico City, her 17-year-old brother, Jorge, sets off on a desperate mission to save her. Adriana is trapped by an underground network of international thugs who earn millions exploiting their human cargo, and her only friend throughout the ordeal is Veronica, a young Polish woman captured by the same criminal gang. As Jorge dodges overwhelming obstacles to track the girl's abductors, he meets Ray, a Texas cop whose own loss of family leads him to become an ally. From the barrios of Mexico City and the treacherous Rio Grande border, to a secret Internet sex-slave auction and a tense confrontation at a stash house in suburban New Jersey, Ray and Jorge forge a close bond as they frantically try to catch up with Adriana's kidnappers before she is sold and disappears into a brutal underworld from which few victims ever return. Inspired by "The Girls Next Door," Peter Landesman's chilling New York Times Magazine story on the U.S. sex trade, Trade exposes one of the world's most heinous crimes. (Roadside Attractions)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Summer Storm
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
USA Today Claudia Puig
Trade unflinchingly sheds light on a heinous crime. Yes, it's tough to sit through. But don't let that keep you away.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
Though it's ostensibly a thriller, Trade constantly works against the conventions of its genre in a rather audacious way -- finding, for instance, surprising moments of humanity in even the most monstrous of its villains.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust
Trade works fairly well as a thriller ticking down to Adriana's auction. It's less assured when it strains for some buddy picture chemistry between Ramos and Kline. Though both actors are fine, with Ramos' performance being reminiscent of some of Diego Luna's English-language roles, the attempts at humor to ease the tension between Jorge and Ray and some of the speechifying are out of tune with the rest of the film.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
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.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Trade comes off like TV-movie sensationalism, sidetracked by distracting backstories and hard-to-swallow plot twists.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Connie Ogle
Trade's wake-up call needs to be heeded, but its missteps detract from its devastating message.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
The story's incredible coincidences, lazy cynicism and easy ironies recast a real-life horror story as easy-to-dismiss melodrama, complete with sequential "happy" endings.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Jeannette Catsoulis
An eagerly prurient dip into the sex-trafficking trough, Trade teeters between earnest exposé and salacious melodrama. Minus the film’s near-visible weight of conscience, success in the second category would have been virtually guaranteed.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman
It points a determined finger (a middle finger, almost) at law enforcement, which cannot or will not recognize kidnapping victims in our midst, especially if they are undocumented and brown-skinned.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
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.
New York Post Kyle Smith
But improbable situations, heavy reliance on coincidence and an improbable climax nearly tip the film into TV-movie territory.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
With a movie of this sort, the viewer expects to undergo something grueling and disturbing. Trade's inability to deliver that sort of visceral experience makes it unworthy of anyone's hard-earned dollars.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Trade is a pulpy Hollywood-style melodrama disguised as a harrowing message movie about Important Social Issues. 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.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Human trafficking is an awful societal issue, and Trade happens to be an awful movie about human trafficking.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell
You end up with a movie that takes that real problem and makes it feel like an exploitation contrivance.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Kline gives an interesting performance playing against type, but with its action plotting and sensationalistic scenes of women being brutalized, the movie often seems to be exploiting as much as illuminating the problem.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Duane Byrge
Trade is an earnest attempt to dramatize the network of Internet sex "tunnels." Unfortunately, the film's horrific and important subject matter is distilled into a lackluster lump of generic buddy-movie/road-picture components.
Read Full Review >Variety Robert Koehler
Little more than a slipshod, trashy, sometimes exploitative thriller.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Robert Wilonsky
It's pure exploitation--the kind of movie after which you need a long, hot shower. German director Marco Kreuzpaintner's movie looks like "Traffic" and "Syriana"--clearly his role models--but is little more than our generation's version of 1979's "Hardcore."
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
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.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle G. Allen Johnson
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.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Anything that holds our interest can be entertaining, in a way, but the movie seems to have an unwholesome determination to show us the victims being terrified and threatened. When I left the screening, I just didn't feel right.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 5.2 (out of 10) based on 9 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Elmer R gave it a9:
Is a good movie, and shows the differences between cultures. Many of the "experts" rate this low cuz they dont like that a mexican calls them stupid and ignorant. But if you watch this film with a little open mind, you will find a movie not so far from the reality.
Jay B. gave it a9:
Yes, there can be improvements made to the overall quality of the film, however, this movie sheds some light to a sordid underworld many of us are ignorant to. Sorry, but thats a fact. Watch the film and form your own opinion. I thought the movie overall was outstanding along with the performances by the main actors.
O A gave it a10:
This is the best picture of the year, no country was great but this film will bring tears to your eyes, its real, unflinching and captivating.
Chad S. gave it a5:
Don't let a man do a woman's job. The sex trafficking of minors is a story that should be unrelentingly grim (like Lukas Moodyson's "Lilya-4-Ever"); a female screenwriter knows this. "Trade" stares at the sordid world of child exploitation, and flinches. Rather than be at the front and center of the viewer's attention, the story of two underaged girls(one Polish, one Mexican) being transported to New Jersey for auction, inexplicably, is sometimes used to frame the curiously cheerful auxiliary story of two boys(one American, one Mexican) pursuing the kidnappers. "Trade" is a road movie about the sex trafficking of minors. Sometimes Jorge(Cesar Ramos) remembers that Adriana(Paulina Gaitan) is, in all likelihood, going to be raped; sometimes he forgets; or rather, the movie forgets. The cultural differences between Ray(Kevin Kline) and Jorge(he doesn't like Ray's classical music) that "Trade" insists on exploring is inappropriate to say the least. In one scene, the younger charge gets to drive...and have control over the music. If "Trade" was written by a woman, Veronica(Alicja Bachleda-Curus) wouldn't exit "Trade" in spectacular "Thelma & Louise"-like fashion. As much as the Polish girl loves her baby boy, it's unlikely that she'd abandon Adriana(Paulina Gaitan), a younger girl, to fend off their two kidnappers on her own. "Trade" is too entertaining, and too easy to watch.
Dan S. gave it a0:
So bad it is painful.
Lo O. gave it a0:
Simply a bad film. Save your money and go and see Holly when it comes out.
