Honestly, if you clicked on this, you probably already know you want to see Skin Trade, regardless of what I say. The only situation in which you didn’t is if you didn’t know who was actually in the movie.
Dolph Lundgren. Tony Jaa. Michael Jai White. Ron Perlman. Peter Weller. Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa.
I mean, that’s it. That’s your review right there.
Quality is irrelevant here. If you like action movies, and you know that one exists with Dolph Lundgren, Tony Jaa, Michael Jai White, Ron Perlman, Peter Weller, and Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa, then you already know you’re going to watch it.
It actually being good would pretty much just be icing on the cake.
Ladies and gentlemen… consider that cake iced as fuck.
Though there are a few minor nits to pick (and pick them I shall, on the off chance they’ll decide to start paying me by the word), you pretty much get everything you’d hope to get out of a DTV movie starring Dolph Lundgren, Tony Jaa, Michael Jai White, Ron Perlman, Peter Weller, and Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa.
Which is to say, they fight. A bunch.
To get the nit-pickery out of the way, the actual story of the movie bummed me out. I don’t know what happened, but in the past couple of years, Direct To Video movies have been going in a decidedly grim direction, and it kind of saps some of the fun.
Skin Trade has a pretty bleak subject matter, and it lessens the pleasure of watching these dudes pound the shit out of one another when the stakes are this high and the implications are so grim.
Not much room for shits and giggles when the bad guys are kidnapping little girls, getting them hooked on heroin and selling them as sex slaves, I guess…
Dolph Lundgren plays Detective Nick Cassidy, a New York cop investigating Serbian gangsters involved in human trafficking. When he shoots the son of head Serb Viktor Dragovic (Ron Perlman, naturally), there is revenge and dead wives and daughters and things of this nature.
Seeking revenge for the revenge that Dragovic sought, Cassidy travels to Thailand teaming up with Tony Vitayakul (Tony Jaa), a Thai detective who also does not care for human trafficking.
Happily, violence ensues.
It should go without saying (but somehow doesn’t) that action is the most important part of an action movie, especially a DTV action movie. And the action here, as shot by Ben Nott, is exquisitely framed, artfully choreographed by Dian Hristov (whose bonafides as a stunt coordinator as ridiculous), and edited by a person who actually knows how (Victor DuBois, who sharpened his teeth on such films as Braveheart and The Last Samurai, and clearly learned a thing or two from his time as an editor on the show Justified, which I clearly love and which has some of the best action scenes on television.
I can’t stress enough how important this sort of thing is. Though the tide seems to be shifting back towards a more classical style of action directing (or, at the very least, a mostly workable blend of old school and new), there was a good decade where mindless kineticism and so-called “experiential” camerawork have taken the place of spatial cohesion and a sense of rhythm. Action has become a cacophony when it should be a crescendo.
All of this to basically say the action here is by and large, top shelf stuff.
And the parts between all that punching ain’t too bad, either. Lundgren has developed a certain hulking charisma, certainly enough to play the lead. As his partner, Tony Jaa… well, Tony Jaa cuts a nicely imposing figure when he’s silent and still, but struggles mightily with the English dialogue he’s given. Not that the screenplay is giving him gold to work with or anything, but the way he practically chokes on all of his badass pre- and post-kill lines makes them seem even worse than they probably are.
I say “probably” because I didn’t understand half of them.
Oh, well: the important thing is that he kicks people really hard.
Michael Jai White has probably done enough of these flicks by now that he knows to tamp down his charisma so he doesn’t absolutely blow everyone in the vicinity off the screen. And he does all right when he’s sharing scenes with Dolph, but his powers fail him whenever it’s him and Tony Jaa. Unless they’re fighting (not a spoiler: if these two were in the movie and didn’t fight, this review would be over by now, because I would have written ‘Fucking Bullshit’ under the byline and sent it to the editors), Jaa just kind of disappears whenever he shares the frame with White.
And when they DO fight, you’re kind of amazed, because they’ll be kicking each other and it’s like, ‘Holy shit. Even Michael Jai White’s FEET are more charismatic than Tony Jaa’s! HIS FEET! How the fuck does that work?”
As for the non-fighters: Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa shows up just long enough to get his name in the cast list; and Peter Weller shows up, delivers some batshit insane line readings, drops the mic, and exits stage left leaving everybody to wonder how the fuck he just did that.
Seriously, it’s as if Weller looked at the script and just announced, “Hey, everybody! I’m going to work this shitty dialogue like an Amish wife works a butter churn. Watch and learn, you knuckle dragging dipshits!”
Which is not a line from the movie, but probably should have been.
Ron Perlman is Ron Perlman, which is to say he lends his bad guy character more gravitas than the film truly deserves.
The rest of the cast is a cross section of lousy Russian accents. Which didn’t bother me all that much, since the sounds they make as they’re being beaten to death transcend language.
The movie was directed by Ekachai Uekrongtham, who made a genuinely acclaimed movie, the 2004 transgender sports pic Beautiful Boxer, which indicates to me that it might be on a slightly higher tier than the usual DTV dreck. It has the higher production value of an actual theatrical release, and I kind of wish it was. Qualms about the subject matter aside, this is exactly the kind of no frills, down and dirty trash cinema we should be getting way more of.
It gives the people what they want, provided they want dudes kicking the shit out of one another.
Which they do.
