A routine crime melodrama with art- house message-movie pretensions, “Trade” takes us inside the sordid international rackets of white slavery, forced heroin addiction and bicycle theft.
A young Mexican hood (Cesar Ramos) whose 13-year-old sister (Paulina Gaitan) has been kidnapped to be sold into sexual bondage happens to run into a Texas cop (Kevin Kline, who shows up nearly 40 minutes into the film) who happens to be looking for his own daughter.
Scenes of captive women being horrifically abused alternate with the two men’s search as lots of shaky hand-held camerawork tries to convince us this is another “Traffic.”
But improbable situations (the cop and the thief wind up driving from Texas to New Jersey together), heavy reliance on coincidence and an improbable climax nearly tip the film into TV-movie territory.
TRADE **
Running time: 113 minutes. Rated R (graphic violence, rape, drug abuse, profanity). At the Empire, the Angelika, others.