Trade

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.

1/10