Skin Trade Human Trafficking Is Bad

Skin Trade feels like a film right out of 1991, which makes sense given that it stars and was written and produced by Dolph Lundgren, who saw his greatest success as an actor – if you can even call what he did during that period “acting” – during that time. The action is dumb and poorly shot, it’s so on-the-nose that nobody would mistake it for being subtle, and it’s all too silly to take seriously, even though it really, really wants you to do exactly that. Lundgren stars as Nick Cassidy, a New Jersey detective who is the lead investigator in a human trafficking operation led by Viktor Dragovic (Ron Perlman). Somewhere around a third into the film, his wife and daughter are presumably killed, and his quest becomes even more personal. He’s joined – and sometimes hindered – by a Thai detective, Tony (Tony Jaa), who is initially tasked with arresting Cassidy, before learning that the real bad guy is Dragovic. Do you really need any more details to figure out exactly how this plays out, beat for beat? I certainly didn’t. This is the type of plot that direct-to-video movies are carved from with great regularity, except now we can stream them on-demand while they get a simultaneous and tiny theatrical release. Unfortunately, to get to his action scenes, we have to watch him try to act, which is an awkward and painful experience for everyone involved. He never looks comfortable when he’s not throwing punches, and you can feel that coming through the screen every time he tries to deliver a line of dialogue or show off more than a singular facial expression. Dolph Lundgren was never known as a good actor, and he doesn’t do anything to dispel that notion here, delivering a one-note performance, with that one note consisting of lots of grunting and kicks. Ron Perlman fairs little better, but gets to use a silly accent, so at least he’s good for a laugh. Skin Trade is the most mediocre and generic type of bad action movie. It doesn’t contain anything good or bad enough to get excited about, and instead feels like a slog to sit through. It would’ve been a poor entry into Dolph Lundgren’s canon back in the mid-1990s, and being a 2015 release just makes it feel outdated and sad. It’s always disappointing to see a passion project not wind up worth watching, but that’s exactly what Skin Trade is. Bottom Line: Generic, pointless, and consisting mostly of poor action scenes, Skin Trade deserved to go directly to home video. Recommendation: Unless you’re a time traveler from 1991 and for some reason want to see what a present-day Dolph Lundgren actioner looks like, you have no reason to see Skin Trade. [rating=1.5]