TRAFFICKED

 

We are well aware of the human sex trafficking that takes place in other countries. African, Asian, European, Latin American countries are notorious for luring ordinary women into false business deals and then forcing them into the sex trade.

 

Director Will Wallace's latest film is adapted from the expertise of screenwriter Siddarth Kara, an expert on human trafficking and modern sex slavery. (In fact he is the Director of the Program on Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, a Fellow on Forced Labor at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a lecturer at UC Berkeley.)

 

In the film, the story follows the lives of three girls - Sara (Kelly Washington), an orphaned white girl from the U.S, Mali (Jessica Obilom)- a Nigerian girl, and Amba (Alpa Banker) from India who all wind up captured, sold and now the property of a Texas brothel owner name Simon (Sean Patrick Flanery). Ashley Judd plays the social worker who arranges the purchase of Sara while the others are either kidnapped or in so much debt they have no choice.

Simon, offers them all the deal that after they have sex with only 500 men, they will be free to go. But you already know that is a shallow promise as he uses drugs and beating to make sure the girls stay in place.

 

Simon is, however, in business with two other characters, the local politician/sheriff Christian (Patrick Duffy) and an unseen Mexican drug cartel boss. The cartel boss supplies him with women, he supplies the cartel with guns; everyone makes money. The major problem is that more and more of the girls are showing up dead and the Mexican is starting to get pushy.

 

During the course of everything the girls are constantly scheming for a way to escape, especially after another girl gets killed just shy of her 500th bedding. Sara is just hopeful to get in touch with her former nun and her baby sister. Mali is hopeful to earn enough money to get back to Nigeria to pay off debts. Amba just wants to get to college, like her life was planned before the kidnapping.

 

There is nothing subtle about the film. Women are beaten and killed, bodies are stacked and buried. Veteran baddie actor Brian Thompson gives the girls plenty of reasons to be very afraid.

 

While this is not a technically perfect film, it is entertaining with serviceable performances by most of the cast. It is fun to see Ann Archer even though her role is small.

 

"Trafficked" looks at the sex trafficking industry in the United States with a cold dramatization of the cruelty toward the victims forced into the sex slavery. The acting is decent with a nice nod to a few nearly forgotten veteran actors.   -- GEOFF BURTON

 

GEOFF BURTON

 

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