Skin Trade (2014)

This movie's makers haven't met a formula cliché that they don't like.

These fight scenes—and the chases that often precede them—are neither ingenious nor novel, but they’re fun and cleanly shot; the fact that this can be considered a major virtue probably says more about the state of the big-budget action movie than about Skin Trade itself.

Skin Trade's action is all blood and sinew, but its camerawork and choreography are nothing if not graceful.

Everyone’s there to get the job done, Dolph Lundgren style, meaning Skin Trade is a throwback to the one-man-army actioners of the ’80s, sprinkled with updated stats on human trafficking. If the film happens to raise awareness, then that’s more bonus than objective.

If bare-knuckle fights are what you seek, director Ekachai Uekrongtham certainly delivers. But the film scarcely scratches the surface of the horrors of human trafficking.