Trade

In Mexico City, thirteen-year-old Adriana is abducted. Her brother Jorge sets out to find her, and the trail crosses the border into the United States and as far as an auction in New Jersey. Along the way he meets a Texas policeman and the two continue together. The film is not interested in a single abduction. It is interested in the infrastructure of the trade: it shows trafficking as a chain, with a different intermediary at every link, and the online auction as the end of that chain. The form proceeds like a road movie while leaning on the rules of the thriller: pursuit, a race against time, an intervention at the last minute. Its source is journalism: the screenplay is based on Peter Landesman's long investigative piece in the New York Times Magazine. Marco Kreuzpaintner directed. Kevin Kline plays the policeman, Cesar Ramos the brother and Paulina Gaitán Adriana. Who it is for: viewers who like socially engaged thrillers and films drawn from real events. Who it is not for: anyone who cannot carry the weight of the subject, or who is uneasy with rescue narratives. The film resolves the matter in the end through individual heroism.