TRADE - earnest but still compelling sex trade drama

TRADE is a slightly exploitative, certainly rose-tinted drama about sex slaves smuggled into the US via Mexico and auctioned off on a website. Based on an article published in the New York Times, the movie tracks a 13-year old girl called Adriana who's kidnapped by the Russians and freighted into a suburban house in New Jersey where the exchange will take place. The movie is pretty unflinching in showing how these operations work - from casual rape, to "picking up pocket change" en route. Where the movie gets a little ridiculous is in its neat coincidences. Adriana's loyal brother Jorge manages to stalk her kidnappers all the way to the Mexican border where he conveniently hooks up with the world's kindest cop (Kevin Kline). Together, they follow Adriana's convoy to New Jersey where the cop will actually front the money to buy Adriana back. Surely the grim reality of sex slavery is incompatible with this sort of fairy-tale (or religious redemptive) ending?

I have to admit that these hokey narrative tricks help keep the movie palatable and compelling. The relationship between Ray and Jorge leavens the didactic material. Still, TRADE never really rises above a competently made TV movie and packs none of the punch of Lukas Moodyddon's brutal LILYA 4EVER.

TRADE played Sundance 2007 and Berlin 2008. It was released last year in the US, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. It opened earlier this year in Singapore, Portugal, Israel and Mexico and is currently on release in the UK.

TRANSPORTER 3 - blissfully camp!

TRANSPORTER 3 is sheer genius. It's the B-movie action thriller shorn of anything extraneous - sensible plot, character development - shot like a car commercial on steroids and featuring the campest action hero since CONAN. Jason Statham is becoming as iconic as Michael Caine - another actor who plays the same accent and the same implacable diffidence in every single movie - another actor whose unconventional looks apparently rule him out as a sex symbol. Statham's career is a beacon of hope for all men and all actors!

In TRANSPORTER 3 it's business as usual. "Frank" is our hero - a terse driver who delivers "packages" against all odds. Within the first twenty minutes, a car has been driven into his house containing a (allegedly) hot Ukrainian chick. Frank has to deliver her to Budapest. If he wanders more than 75 metres from his car he blows up. It's a superb conceit because it creates ever more ridiculous chase scenes and fight scenes. See Frank beat up eight men WITH HIS SUIT! See Frank chase down a speeding Audi ON A KID'S BIKE! Pure Action Gold.

TRANSPORTER 3 is on release in France, the USA, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, India and the UK. It opens next week in Belgium and Brazil; on December 19th in Estonia; on December 31st in Egypt; on January 1st in Singapore; on January 8th in Germany and South Korea; on January 16th in Poland; on January 23rd in Romania; on February 5th in Australia and on February 26th in the Czech Republic.

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (2008) - An inconvenient remake

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL was a lean, simple sci-fi movie about an alien in human form who tries to warn humankind against continuing on its destructive path. Released at the start of the Cold War, the movie had a strong agenda - against realist inter-state politics and for liberal internationalism as mediated by the United Nations. The movie also contained a lot of Christian imagery, with Klaatu as the saviour of humankind come down to earth to point out the error of our ways. The message was large and profound but it was made through argument rather than special effects. Klaatu - the alien - ponders the words of The Lincoln Memorial and debates politics with an eminent scientist. It was a remarkably quiet and thoughtful film.

The new remake is a rather different beast. For a start, it's replete with big-budget special effects and it's self-consciously grandiose. The message is also different. Klaatu (Keanu Reeves) isn't here to save us from ourselves but to save the Earth from human-kind. Maybe in a post-modern world full of failing states and discredited supernational institutions, the film-makers thought appealing to liberal internationalism wouldn't fly? But it's a real shame. In the year of the Obama landslide, I could easily imagine a film that earnestly professed belief in the redemptive power of liberal democracy striking a chord.

The one constant is the Christian iconography - Klaatu walks on water, raises a man from the dead, and in a closing scene seems to take the agents of death out of the Bensons and into himself - thus taking away the sin of the world.

I rather like the bleak message and I also liked the special effects. But I didn't buy into the human relationships that power the plot. In the original film Klaatu strikes up a warm relationship between a single mother and her son who happen to live in the same boarding house as him. Through spending time with them he realises that humans have good qualities and deserve the chance to change. In the current movie I was never sold on the relationship between Klaatu, Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) and her stepson Jacob (Jaden Smith). Maybe it's because Helen is cast as a high powered scientist, and the relationship between Helen and her son is now rather complicated. Somehow it detracts from the relationship with Klaatu. At any rate, I didn't buy that in the course of a rather cursory relationship, Klaatu would change his mind about humanity.

So, for my money, stick to the original movie. Not least to avoid any fanboy disappointment at the omission of the most famous line of the original movie.

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL is on release in Belgium, France, Norway, Thailand, Austria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands, Peru, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Slovakia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, the UK, the USA and Venezuela. It opens in Japan on December 19th; in South Korea on December 24th; in Australia on December 26th; in Egypt on December 31st; in Argentina on January 1st; in Brazil on January 9th; and in Poland on January 16th.

Rather than CHANGELING, why not watch SUMMER and see some authentic emotion and social injustice?

After a long day in the office I wasn't looking forward to what I presumed would be an earnest but dull look at gritty British working class life. I couldn't have been more wrong. SUMMER is a marvellous film - it's certainly a bracing look at wasted lives but the bleak subject matter is offset by a wicked sense of humour founded in the little absurdities of life.

It's the story of three friends who grew up in working class England in the eighties and where life took them. Shaun is a kid with learning disabilities in a school and an era where people just thought you were being arsey when really you were frustrated and angry. His best mate is Daz, another kid consigned to no future by an educational system that streamed kids into those worthy of taking exams and those destined for the dole queue. The two kids hang out with a girl called Katy against the better judgement of her parents. After all, Katy's clever - she has a future. (If you want to see how institutions victimise innocents then this movie is far more subtle and realistic than CHANGELING - even though I know CHANGELING was based on a true story that just happened to be absurd.)

The story of their summer as teenagers is inter-cut with their adult lives. Shaun (Robert Carlyle) is now a disheveled petrol pump attendant who also acts as a carer for Daz (Steve Evets) who's now consigned to a wheelchair and drinking himself to death. Daz' son Daniel (Michael Socha) is following in his footsteps. And then there's Katy - who went on the university and reached dizzying heights as a provincial solicitor.

You'd think all this would add up to a pretty grim movie - and there are scenes that are as anger-inducing as CHANGELING wants to be. The social injustice drips from the screen. And Robert Carlyle's performance is as emotionally affecting and heartbreaking as anything Angelina Jolie conjures up. But the great thing is that despite seemingly shitty circumstances both Shaun and Daz retain their sarcastic sense of humour and can still take pleasure in life. And the same could be said for the movie as a whole. SUMMER doesn't have the manicured production values of a big-budget Oscar contender but it feels more real, more humble and it's all the more engaging for that.

SUMMER played Rome 2008 and is currently on release in the UK.

CHANGELING - plays like a highly polished TV melodrama

I just don't see what's so amazing about the much-hyped new Clint Eastwood flick, CHANGELING. Sure, it's a handsomely designed period piece set in 1920s LA. Sure, Clint Eastwood knows how to light and frame a shot. Sure, Angelina Jolie is convincing as the destraught mother of an abducted child. But frankly, this movie played like one of those afternoon tele-dramas - all mawkish score and glycerine tears. The first hour is dull. Jolie plays Christine Collins as meek and mild - a veritable weeping Madonna. She cries when her son goes missing. She cries when the LAPD - keen for some good publicity - foist another kid on her - forcing her to accept him as her lost son. "He's not my son!" "He's not my son!" The only punctuation: John Malkovich with another irritatingly mannered performance as a political activist and Jeffrey Donovan as a caricatured corrupt cop.

After an hour of this banal suffering we are introduced to the story of what really happened to Walter Collins. Turns out he was abducted by a serial killer. We get two compelling performances from the relative unknowns in the cast. Jonathan Butler Harner is fantastic as the killer, Gordon Northcott - but even he is upstaged by a kid called Eddie Alderson who plays Northcott's nephew and forced accomplice. It's a bravura performance - the real bravura performance of the film - and it's a shame it's getting overlooked in all the hype about Jolie.

It may sound facetious but the problem with CHANGELING is the story. It's too much and not enough at the same time. Even though it IS a true story, it still feels absurd and hammy. I mean, I'm perfectly willing to believe in a venal LAPD, but having policeman be so damn stupid just brings me out of the movie. I was begging for the screenwriter to move away from the real history and add some kind of gray areas to the characterisation because these slimeballs had all the depth of the Wicked Stepmother. It's also too much insofar as it goes on and on and on. The movie has more endings that LORD OF THE RINGS: RETURN OF THE KING! Christine Collins wins her tribunal against the LAPD! Then the serial killer is arrested! And there's still a good half hour to go. Enough already! I get that she is condemned to a life without closure - that she chooses that life - and that, to use Eastwood's rather heavy-handed imagery, she will always be imprisoned by the search for her son.

At the same time, the story just isn't enough. Because of all the hype, we all know what the story is when we go into the cinema. Some film-makers are still able to create tension even when we know the outcome. A classic example is Kevin MacDonald's documentary ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER, where I was on the edge of my seat during the rescue attempts even though I knew the tragic ending of the Munich Olympics hostage crisis. CHANGELING doesn't attempt to create an air of mystery or tension. Eastwood isn't playing it for the Sommersby moment - is the kid really her son or not? No. He's really interested in how ordinary people get trampled by corrupt institutions. And if that's your game - you'd do far better to check out LA CONFIDENTIAL or CHINATOWN, true stories or not.

CHANGELING played Cannes 2008 and is currently on release in the US, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Italy, the UK, Ireland, Greece, Israel and the Netherlands. It opens on December 19th in Spain and on January 8th in the Czech Republic, Hong KOng, Finland, Iceland and Sweden. It opens on January 15th in Singapore, Denmark and Estonia and on January 22nd in Argentina, Chile and Germany. It opens on January 30th in Norway and Turkey; on February 6th in Brazil and Poland. It opens on January 12th in Hungary and on February 21st in Japan.

MADAGASCAR: ESCAPE 2 AFRICA - great fun despite the surfeit of characters

The Kid and I had a great time watching the MADAGASCAR sequel. It's a film full of loveable characters voiced by brilliant comedians. The animation is stunning - the African landscapes made me pine for Thika. The humour is character-led rather than relying on smart-ass pop-cultural references. And let's not forget those penguins, who are as good as anything from the old AIRPLANE! movies. (What else would we expect from Etan Cohen, a writer who is steeped in Hollywood satire and penned the patchy but occasionally brilliant TROPIC THUNDER).

The movie sees four New York zoo animals, stranded in Madagascar, make an attempt to fly back to New York in a battered plane piloted by penguins. The pile of junk only makes it as far as Africa, and the animals are pleasantly surprised to be back among their own kind. The hero, Alex the lion (Ben Stiller), finds his real mum and dad, but LION KING-stylee is banished by an evil lion called Makunga (Alex Baldwin). Once again, the key conflict is that Alex just wants to be an entertainer instead of being a ferocious hunter. Marty the Zebra (Chris Rock) is disturbed to find that all zebras are alike - and in a bravura racial commentary - that his friends can't tell him apart from the herd. Meanwhile Melman the Zebra (David Schwimmer) has to pluck up the courage to tell Gloria the Hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) that he loves her - a plot line all the more piquant insofar as it shadows the Ross-Rachel plot-line from FRIENDS.

The only problem with the film is that it is, in a sense, a victim of its own success. The film-makers have created four lead characters that we care about, let alone the comic light relief in the form of the aforementioned penguins and Sacha Baron Cohen's King Julien - equally as entertaining as the main plot. So you do get the feeling that lots of different characters are fighting for attention in a serious of stories that are never given as much room to breathe as necessary.

MADAGASCAR: ESCAPE 2 AFRICA is already on release in Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, the Philippines, the US, the Czech Republic, Singapore, Slovakia, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Israel, Egypt, Portugal, Iceland, Romania, Spain, Turkey, Belgium, France, Argentina, Chile, Germany, Mexico and the UK. It goes on release next week in Croatia, Brazil, Estonia and Venezuela. It opens on December 18th in Australia, Greece, Israel, Italy and Hong Kong. It opens in Poland on January 1st, in South Korea on January 8th and in Japan on March 14th.