'Trade' off when it comes to drama, sense

Part expose, part trashy exploitation tale, the disturbing drama "Trade" squanders an opportunity to confront and challenge the secret world of trafficking children for sex.

With pedophilia approaching a social pandemic, "Trade" possessed the potential to shine a light on this shadowy business and muster major public support against it. But, a key piece of miscasting and utter lapses of realism relegate this drama to the ranks of a nice try to tell a not-so-nice story.

It begins in Mexico City where a petty teen thug named Jorge (a believable Cesar Ramos) would rather rob American tourists than watch his 13-year-old sister Adriana (Paulina Gaitan).

A team of professional procurers kidnaps Adriana and sends her packing with other children to anxiously waiting American customers across the border.

Good thing for brother Jorge that he was in the right place at the right time in Mexico City to spot Adriana being herded into a truck. Fueled by guilt and rage, he follows the kidnappers to a dilapidated building where a gringo mysteriously appears.

He turns out to be Ray, a Texas insurance fraud investigator played by Kevin Kline, who more resembles an insurance salesman. Or maybe a golf pro.

The two instantly dislike each other. Ray listens to classic music. Jorge likes salsa. Jorge puts his feet on Ray's car console. Ray tells him to take them off.

Eventually, the two bond and trust each other. Ray vows to help Jorge find his sister. Ray has his own missing girl case. Her identity is hardly the surprise this movie makes it out to be.

Parts of "Trade" are pretty upsetting, especially a field scene in which American men rent the children from the truck for 15-minute intervals in private little areas surrounded by brush and grass.

Like all good exploitation movies, "Trade" traffics in the forbidden, and it suggests the monstrosity of pedophilia without crossing the line into the obscene.

Still, this movie feels a bit disingenuous. "Trade" brings in an attractive young Polish mother (Alicja Bachleda), another kidnap victim, to be savagely raped by her captors apparently to be a less-objectionable substitute for graphically violating a child.

"Trade" has been directed without much style or flourish by German-born Marco Kreuzpaintner. He can't decide if "Trade" should go full sleaze ahead as a piece of exploitative trash, or be a meditative examination of Mexican-American relations on moral matters of mutual concern.

Even if he could decide, "Trade" suffers from laughable lapses in logic, such as the leaders of a super-secret New Jersey pedophilia ring who, thinking Ray to be a customer, arrange for him to buy Adriana at their own home.

These procurers aren't too bright. But they seem right at home in a movie like "Trade."

"Trade"

Dan Gire gives it: Two stars out of four

In theaters: 9-28-07

Starring:

Kevin Kline as Ray

Cesar Ramos as Jorge

Paulina Gaitan as Adriana

Alicja Bachleda as Veronica

Written by: Jose Rivera; based on Peter Landesman's article "The Girls Next Door"

Produced by: Roland Emmerich and Rosilyn Heller

Directed by: Marco Kreuzpaintner

Released by:A Lions Gate Pictures release

Rated: R (violence, rape, drug use, language)

Running time: 119 minutes