Trade
A Texas cop, whose own daughter might have been forced into sexual slavery, joins forces with a Mexican youth to find the boy's sister, 13-year-old Adriana who is kidnapped by members of an international network of sex traffickers.
19 December 1944, Norfolk, Virginia, USA
23 October 1959, Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico
2 August 1955, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
22 May 1959, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA
16 February 1967, Moscow, RSFSR, USSR [now Russia]
September 12, 1985 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
12 September 1950, USSR
31 August 1970, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
19 August 1980, Sandwich, Massachusetts, USA
December 12, 2008
Such difficult subject matter requires a harder-edged delivery, but hopefully this accessible drama will therefore get its message across to a wider audience.December 03, 2007
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.September 28, 2007
Trade has telegraphed the most sordid examples of the international child sex trade into a small, somewhat exploitative thriller.December 12, 2008
This cockeyed odd-couple road movie is well-intentioned, but it comes perilously close to feeding off the crimes it condemns.July 29, 2009
A brutal, shattering story of child trafficking that is intended to deliver a sobering punch about the global human trafficking trade, Marco Kreutzpaintner's powerful drama is in fact based on investigative reports in the New York Times.December 12, 2008
As cinema, 'Trade' is flawed: the script is functional and the dry characters are hemmed in by the machinations of an unremarkable plot.October 05, 2007
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.December 12, 2008
If only the whole matched the power and potency of the details. Masquerades as a searing exposé, but turns out to be a lurid and overwrought account.December 12, 2008
Kline and the talented Gaitan do their best to engage on a human level, but ending with various sobering stats about the global sex trade only underlines the film's woefully misplaced dramatic emphasis.October 01, 2007
I was moved.December 12, 2008
Is it possible to agree with what a film is saying while disliking the way it says it? Trade leaves no arm untwisted and no message unrammed.October 03, 2007
Grim, hard to take, and nightmare-producing, Trade is not for the faint of heart.