Trade

When his sister is kidnapped by sex-slave traders, a Mexican youth (Cesar Ramos) follows them over the border into the U.S., where he is befriended and aided by a Texas cop (Kevin Kline). The issue of sex-slavery deserves a better movie than this, one that doesn’t blur the line between exposé and exploitation. Jose Rivera’s script is incredible—in the literal, non-complimentary sense; he may have a grasp of the issue (thanks to Peter Landesman’s New York Times Magazine article), but he’s foggy on the time it takes to drive from Texas to New Jersey, and on the persuasive power of coincidence. Marco Kreuzpaintner’s direction is unsteady—again, literally, with an over-reliance on shaky hand-held cameras. Worse, Daniel Gottschalk’s bleached, high-contrast cinematography is an eye-straining distraction.