Skin Trade (2014)

Director:

Ekachai Uekrongtham

Starring:

Dolph Lundgren

Tony Jaa

Ron Perlman

Michael Jai White

Plot:

After his family is killed by a Serbian gangster with international interests, NYC detective Nick goes to S.E. Asia and teams up with a Thai detective to get revenge and destroy the syndicates human trafficking network.

Review:

Lot of action names in this movie. The story was fairly mindless, I called everything that happened, there were several good fights, and the ending was weak.

Dolph Lundgren, Tony Jaa, and Michael Jai White all had good fight scenes. There wasn’t much shaky cam, though, there were more quick edits than I wanted. Still I was surprised at how good the fights looked, considering the budget for the film.

Something that annoyed me were the edits through the movie. My husband said that some people said it was the directors style. I don’t know if that’s true, but it felt more unprofessional than a style choice. At one point Michael Jai White was talking with Dolph Lundgren while walking down a hall and then all of a sudden Robocop (Peter Weller) was talking in front of a large group of cops with DL and MJW in the room. It was not seamless and didn’t work with the story and stuff like that happened a few times.

The ending was a set up for a sequel, which is pretty ambitious for this type of movie, but it also took away from the impact of the ending. A helicopter has exploded, which is great, but instead of some cheesy line and riding off into the sunset, Lundgren’s character finds out his daughter is still alive. Which sets up a sequel and gives no real closer for the first movie.

3.5/5