Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

DipitySkillful an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

Paul Magne Haakonsen Right, well a movie such as "Skin Trade" did seem like it could have great potential. After all, I mean, there are some pretty big names on the cast list, which includes Tony Jaa, Michael Jai White, Dolph Lundgren, Ron Perlman and Peter Weller.The concept of the storyline was good, although the movie itself was rather predictable and generic.Naturally there was lots of good action and fighting sequences. These sequences were nicely choreographed and executed on the screen, and that really added to the enjoyment of the movie."Skin Trade" had a good cast, as I mentioned earlier. Though I feel that Michael Jay White, Peter Weller and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa weren't given enough screen time or prominent enough roles to really utilize their abilities and talents.All in all, "Skin Trade" turned out to be a mediocre action movie because of the storyline, and while the action was bountiful and nicely executed, then it could only do so little to salvage the storyline. "Skin Trade" is good enough entertainment for a single viewing if you enjoy action movies that do not challenge your intellectual side.

s3276169 Skin Trade is a moderately watchable B grade action flick.The whole affair has a real 80's vibe with larger than life hero's and villains set against a formula that been done many many times before. That said there's nothing inherently wrong with this film. As far as action shooters go this is entertaining. Its interesting too to see Dolph Lundgren still in the drivers seat. In spite of the fact I think he is nearing 60 he can still mix it up with some really decent martial arts fight scenes. I enjoyed this film. Its not pretending to be anything other than what it is and on this level I think it works quite well. Six out of ten from me.

Comeuppance Reviews Nick Cassidy (Dolph) is a tough New York cop with a loving wife and daughter. When a Serbian gangster named Viktor Dragovic (Perlman) and his three sons appear on Nick's radar, representing many illegal interests, not the least of which is human trafficking, Nick makes it his mission to shut them down. It becomes personal when the baddies kill his wife and daughter and leave him for dead. Now fueled for revenge, Nick travels to Thailand, and while there meets up with a Thai cop named Tony (Jaa). At first they are enemies based on misunderstanding, but eventually they team up to end the Dragovic criminal empire - permanently. Add to that some duplicity on behalf of a man named Reed (White), Nick and Tony have their hands full. Will they both put an out-of-business sign on the SKIN TRADE? Dolph delivers what fans want with Skin Trade, and notches another positive on his ever-growing resume. Having starred in, co-produced, and co-written the film, Dolph has described it as a passion project. That he has two daughters of his own provided even more emotional fuel for him, and he even got involved behind the scenes with anti-trafficking organizations. While that is noble, and there is a tasteful title card after the film that informs us about trafficking, what we're here for is the action, and there's plenty of it. It's all framed around what is probably our favorite plot, the revenge framework.Dolph even assembled a dream cast for this one. You can't do better than having Dolph, Tony Jaa, Michael Jai White (MJW as we call him), Ron Perlman and Peter Weller all together, can you? Weller's part is necessarily restrained, but he does bring his classic voice and intensity to the role. Perlman, honestly, doesn't get a ton of screen time either, but he makes the most of what he has. The Dolph-Tony Jaa fight amongst all the falling rice was a movie highlight, as was another dream pairing, the MJW-Tony Jaa fight.It looks professional and non-junky, thank goodness, and the stellar cast only reinforces the "this could have gone to the theater here and probably did in other countries around the world" vibe. Dolph does walk away from an explosion, which is always cool, but sadly it's a CGI explosion. While we really liked the movie overall, and there is plenty to commend within it, the use of CGI explosions, bullet hits, sparks, etc., plus the annoying use of cut frames was a bit bothersome. But it's very clear the positives outweigh those minor negatives.We applaud everyone involved, especially Dolph, for producing Skin Trade. On the one hand it has brutal violence and top-notch fights from the best in the business, and on the other hand it delivers an important message about one of the evils in the world today. The fact that Dolph and the gang found a way to marry those two together is impressive and noteworthy. Skin Trade is worth seeing and recommending.

jazzProphet Every time I think I've seen the movie with the worst writing in history, one like this comes along and takes the new top spot. Dolph wrote, produced, and starred in this vehicle for himself, so he's the main culprit. Many times I paused to look up something happening in this movie on tvtropes.com - you know, clichés like the hero ripping out his IV to escape the hospital and go after the bad guys, the bad guy revealing crucial information with his dying breath, everyone's inability to land any bullets on major characters, etc etc etc...and some of the lines are so hackneyed and cheesy that they don't even provide camp value.But anyone watching this probably won't care. We all came to see Tony Jaa, Michael Jai White, and Dolph Lundren kick a ton of ass, and that they do. They all go after each other, and the fighting comes with the slick power of Tony's muay thai we're all used to along with incredibly gritty, dark, gruesome physicality/violence that has a Hong-Kong-cinema flair.So get your buds together, have plenty of alcohol (needed for the writing/plot), and laugh at the exposition while taking in the electric action.~~ P.S. If you even care, watch it with subtitles. The accents, both real and fake, make the English spoken in this film almost unrecognizable. Ron Perlman adopts a hilarious Slavic accent to play his Serbian character, Celina Jade (who is perfectly trilingual in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin) is forced to use a stereotypical Vietnamese accent that she really struggles with (in fact, during her scene with Ron, the two start to emulate each others accents by law of proximity!), Thai star Tony Jaa is speaking English like he has a gun to his head (quite literally in some scenes), and Dolph is a native Swede, though his English has gotten way better over the years. I guess that makes Michael Jai White the linguistic straight man.