Skin Trade

Skin Trade (2014)

Runtime: 96 minutes

Directed by: Ekachai Uekrongtham

Starring: Dolph Lundgren, Tony Jaa, Ron Perlman, Celina Jade, Michael Jai White

From: Several different studios

This Thai/Canadian/American production is worth seeing, and is more than a crappy lazy DTV effort: 

Watching this, I realized the three main players all deserve better careers in Hollywood. Dolph Lundgren should not have been in DTV hell for years; sure he's been in some awful flicks for a paycheck but some others-including those he directed himself-are more worthwhile. Hell, he is now 60 years old and yet he's still in great shape so him getting more roles in films like Aquaman is not so far-fetched. Michael Jai White, it's a tragedy he is not an A-lister now. He can act, is not bad-looking in any way, and knows martial arts. Tony Jaa, if his former management wasn't so terrible, he would have been able to break into the Western world much sooner, and right after people were wow'ed by Ong Bak and The Protector. Instead, he had to make apparently awful sequels and that's why he did not act for awhile and made statements proclaiming he was going to be a monk.

This movie is about human trafficking and while the message is in the trappings of a random action flick, it's still a good message to share. Lundgren was a co-producer and co-writer; he waited years until he could make exactly the film he wanted, and that turned out to be doing it with Thai involvement. Ron Perlman (as a Serbian) is a really awful human being, as he leads a gang of really awful human beings who-among other things-engages in human trafficking; girls in Southeast Asia and other locations are taken and sold across the world. Tony Jaa is a cop in Thailand who deals with the problem there while Dolph is a cop in New Jersey that kills (in self defense) one of Perlman's sons. Ron gets revenge by killing his family-which is not a spoiler as both the description here and on Netflix mentions this-so he is on a rampage and goes to Thailand to try and find Perlman.

Dolph ends up doing some things that are not so great on a ethical scale but how you feel about that is up to you. It is natural to think of his turn as The Punisher in those moments. There are several “hey, wait a minute now...” bits but even factoring in that, I'll still say this is a pretty good film and the action fans may feel the same way. There are entertaining action scenes that are not shot incoherently, and when the movie is in Thailand the scenery can be quite lovely. Me, of course I'll be happy to watch a motion picture involving Dolph, Jaa, Perlman, White, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, and Peter Weller, even if some of their roles are pretty small. To me the film was a lot more fun than many of the action films of recent years that actually got theatrical releases.

Not to get political here, but unlike what Roseanne recently claimed, this movie shows actual proof of someone saving some victims from the ravages of human trafficking...