Review: Skin Trade

Dolph Lundgren plays a cop who kills the son of Serbian human trafficking crime lord  Ron Perlman in a shootout. As retaliation, Perlman has Lundgren’s wife and daughter killed, and Lundgren is left comatose. When he wakes up, Lundgren has revenge on his mind, eventually tracking Perlman down in Thailand. Getting in his way, however, is a local cop (Tony Jaa), who is after Perlman for his own reasons. Eventually they begrudgingly decide to come together to bring the sex slave ring down. Celina Jade turns up as a sexy club worker/police informant (of Jaa’s) who runs afoul of Perlman. Michael Jai White plays a bespectacled FBI agent sent to stop Lundgren from going down that dark path, Peter Weller is the angry police captain, and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa has a cameo as a corrupt Thai government official.

 

***** SPOILER WARNING ***** I will be discussing the action scenes in this film, and thus revealing the allegiances of the cast/characters, so best save this review for after you’ve seen the film. Once again a poor waste of Tony Jaa’s talents and not the B-grade version of “The Expendables” the cast might suggest, this 2014 action-drama is poorly written and not as much fun as it should’ve been. It’s certainly nowhere near the semi-hype it seemed to amass online prior to release. I was disappointed. Co-written by leading man Dolph Lundgren (who also co-produced) and directed by Ekachai Uekrongtham (writer-director of the transgender martial arts film “Beautiful Boxer”), it reminded me of “Escape Plan”, in that both films are OK but simply not the kind of film its cast should’ve been making nor the film their audience would really be looking forward to seeing. I understand Mr. Lundgren was very much interested in the sex slave/trade issue, but this is a cop drama with social issues, not a martial arts film. Tony Jaa, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, and Michael Jai White needn’t have bothered turning up in this, their participation feels inorganic and tacked on.

 

The film’s biggest asset is actually its complete stupidity, which is rather charming. It’s so silly and trashy that you wish it were even more so. I mean, for the most part it plays like a Chuck Norris cop flick or an early Steven Seagal film but with less martial arts (and terrible pacing). Take for instance the patented ‘cop and his family are targeted for termination by the bad guys’ scene, which is an absolutely hilarious, poor imitation of “Hard to Kill”. It even involves a fucking rocket launcher! The young lady playing Lundgren’s daughter, by the way, is a shocker. The opening scene with a young girl drugged and prepared for sex slavery, is right out of a trashy Charles Bronson film circa 1986. So it’s a very old-school film using a very serious subject as fodder for a cheesy exploitation/action film, which I am cool with. Unfortunately, Lundgren has apparently seen “Eastern Promises” and has given us the B/C-grade version of it, minus the Naomi Watts character and with some “Hard to Kill”, “Taken”, and “Exit Wounds” thrown into the mix. That’s too much for one film to deal with, and certainly lacking in originality (I’ve read Lundgren wrote the script before “Taken” was released, but I’m not necessarily just gonna take Ivan Drago’s word for it). A Serbian-accented Ron Perlman is clearly playing Armin Mueller-Stahl’s character in “Eastern Promises”.

 

The film is also just clunkily done, in terms of plot. And I’m not just talking about the ‘surprise’ villain who is about as surprising as the one in “Exit Wounds”. It feels like it has three or four first acts in the first 40 minutes alone, and there’s way too much cross-cutting between locales (Thailand, and Vancouver masquerading as New Jersey). What ends up suffering in this first half (aside from pacing) is the action, especially of the martial arts variety. The first 40 minutes or so just don’t deliver the goods and might alienate martial arts fans to the point that they turn it off. Although an initial Lundgren-Jaa fight is avoided, we do get to see Jaa running at Lundgren who is approaching him on a motorbike, with Jaa trying to pull him off the bike. It’s a truly insane stunt. The film finally wakes up in the second half, though, starting with a terrific sawdust-filled fight between Jaa and Lundgren where some couches clearly got the holy fuck pounded out of them. Lundgren’s obviously not where he once was (He looks great for 57, though!), so some concessions have had to be made, but Jaa is truly impressive in flight. Like I said, the film’s silliness is its greatest asset. I mean, Jaa and Lundgren are essentially on the same side here, but nah, fuck it- let’s try to kill each other over semantics! Intentional or not, it’s bloody amusing in a film that seems to want to take itself too seriously, hammering home a message that isn’t as new as Lundgren seems to think. The Jaa vs. Michael Jai White fight is ridiculous fun, with White looking just as imposing and dominant as ever, though for once he has comes off second best here. Seriously, the guy’s normally as unbeatable in a fight as all of Steven Seagal’s characters. Jaa also has a moment that seems to defy explanation as he is standing next to a truck and takes out a guy who is ON the truck with a spin kick. How the fuck did he do that? The man is truly incredible, it’s just a shame that the film doesn’t afford him enough opportunities to prove it. So yes, the second half is undoubtedly better than the first, enough to bump it up to a watchable rating.

 

This film simply isn’t a very good showcase for its cast. Lead actor Lundgren is merely OK but looks in good shape, Jaa gets to speak English (and handles it better than I expected) but is given lame one-liners like ‘Negotiation is…over’. He’s got the second-biggest role here, but the man is better than the film deserves and I’m getting sick of having to say that. I’m not a “Fast and the Furious” fan, but I hope that franchise (and “SPL II”) utilises his great talents a little better than most of his recent output. Ron Perlman and Peter Weller are genuinely talented (and legit) actors, but this film doesn’t really offer any proof of that. Perlman is imposing physically but has surprisingly little screen time for someone playing the main villain. Peter Weller plays the angry, tough police boss effortlessly, or at least seemingly. He’s such an underrated and sadly underutilised actor. Most wasted of all here is B-grade martial arts villain Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa who has a mere cameo as a sleazy Cambodian politician keeping Perlman in hiding in the second half. He’s like Juan Fernandez or Billy Drago to Perlman’s Henry Silva or William Smith, to get back to the Chuck Norris connection. Michael Jai White, like Scott Adkins is a charismatic guy, capable of putting in solid performances too, and is also an impressive cinematic arse-kicker. Watch almost any other action film he’s been in for proof of this (“Blood and Bone” or particularly “Undisputed II: Last Man Standing” with Adkins, a superlative martial arts film), because he doesn’t get much screen time here. It is amusing, however, whenever he does get a scant few moments to spin kick someone’s arse, because he does so while wearing the nerdiest glasses this side of Steve Urkel. It’s a helluva thing to see, folks.

 

The film’s best asset by far is the local Thai scenery and cinematography by Ben Nott (“Daybreakers”, “Predestination”). The ending is surprisingly ballsy I must say, and the best thing about the script. It’s not a closed book at all, and I liked that, it doesn’t even look like it was just tacked-on to allow a sequel, either. It’s a bit of a kick in the guts, so to speak.

 

This isn’t a bad film, just really clunky and not as good (or at least not as much fun) as it should’ve been. It’s frustratingly uneven. Lundgren co-scripted with Aussie Gabriel Dowrick (mostly known as an editor), Steven Elder (a veteran TV actor making his screenwriting debut), and an uncredited John Hyams (director of the startling “Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning”). The misuse of Tony Jaa continues… 

 

Rating: C+