Skin Trade hits iTunes and on demand on April 23rd, with a theatrical release on May 8th from Magnet
Everyone looks at Marvel as the bastion of super team up cinema. Everyone is trying to build a cinematic universe and bring together as many stars or characters as possible these days in order to cash in on that Marvel money. But The Expendables franchise actually kind of came first. This fact is looked over because those films neither lived up to their ultimate promise, nor became quite the box office sensation that any given Marvel film has become. Outside of the Marvel universe, it seems the most obvious follow up success in the super team assembling sub-genre would be the Fast and Furious franchise which, with Fast 5, reinvented itself as a major international blockbuster franchise by teaming up almost every single character of the entire franchise up to that point and making it real event cinema. Universal is trying to build a monster universe, some other studio is trying to pull off the same thing with Robin Hood, and Sony has already tried and failed with the Spider-man franchise. But that failure isn’t looking like it’ll stem the tide of team up cinema anytime soon.
So if The Expendables already did the “Avengers assemble” thing, does action cinema have room for more than that? Skin Trade argues yes. While perhaps the Expendables franchise offers the A-list action hero team up films (with an obvious awareness that even many of those A-listers have passed their prime), the cinematic world of B-action is fairly thriving right now, with a number of thrilling stars working hard to churn out lower-budget action that feels like the giant-budgeted films of 1980s yesteryear. Leading the pack are folks like Scott Adkins and Michael Jai White, and then you’ve got a number of stars from previous generations who are still cranking out steady work and often doing really interesting and exciting stuff with their limited budgets, folks like Jean Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren.
Skin Trade offers a truly tantalizing promise: A team-up of international and largely low-budget action heroes in a film slightly elevated above the production level of the average action B-picture today. From Thai director Ekachai Uekrongtham, who did a film called Beautiful Boxer about a Muay Thai fighter who used his earnings to pay for his sex change operation, this is a director who is perhaps not entirely known for his action chops as much as his dramatic ones. And the moral center of this film being about conflict around the human trafficking market allows for the occasional bit of preaching or genuine drama. Perhaps funding the film through the Thai film industry allowed there to be a more elevated production value, but Skin Trade genuinely does feel like it has more of a budget and a scale to work with than many of its peers.
Then there’s the cast. The trailer promised a little bit of Lungren versus Jaa versus Jai White action, and it delivers that. Perhaps my review could end right here because frankly that is all most people want to know. Will I get to see Tony Jaa fight Michael Jai White? Yep. He and Lundgren will mix it up a little bit too. Hell, even Ron Perlman gets to chew a ton of scenery and swap knuckles with Dolph. Sadly neither Peter Weller nor Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (Mortal Kombat’s Shang Tsung) do any fighting, but their presence is noted and appreciated. Ultimately more of a buddy cop film with a “message movie” at its core, Skin Trade doesn’t end up feeling all that much like an Avengers-style team up but does feel like the B-action production machine pooling their resources to make their version of a prestige picture. And I love that idea.
Nothing in the world is as despicable as human trafficking, so if you want to give a bunch of heroes carte blanche to globetrot and murder a bunch of dudes who “were all bad”, this is the best backdrop you can have. While there’s even less subtlety here than in Taken, the dramatic beats aren’t all that bad. Especially because Lundgren has, over decades of work, become a pretty decent actor. And since Lundgren is listed as a producer and a writer on the movie, I’d say Skin Trade counts as a victory for him.
Where I find myself somewhat disappointed is with Mr. Jaa. Displaying such incredible, awe-inspiring energy and talent in his earliest films Ong Bak and The Protector, personal troubles and CGI have come along and really messed up the ascendancy of Jaa. Once easily considered the heir apparent to Jackie Chan, I haven’t found any of Jaa’s post-Protector films to be as exciting or engaging as his opening salvo was. Jaa seems to have gotten some of his personal issues under control and appears to be interested in building a career again. He’s featured in Furious 7 and brought RZA onboard for Protector 2 (which was ultimately marred by frequent and bad CGI, dulling Jaa’s dynamism) and now headlines Skin Trade. Also growing into a much better actor over the years, Jaa doesn’t seem willing or able to put it all out on the line anymore when it comes to his action scenes. There are a few crucial acrobatics and jump kicks to be found here, but the editing frequently chops up what would have been an awesome wide shot and kills a lot of the potential Muay Thai glory.
I welcome the concept that Skin Trade promises. The action heroes featured here and working today to crank out tons of B-movie glory are still my favorite heroes to soak in. While Marvel and the big studios take “normal” guys like Chris Evans or Chris Pratt and mold them into action heroes, I’ll still always take a genuine action hero who has cut his or her teeth in the trenches of action-specific cinema or professional martial arts any day. I just love what they can do on camera. And if teaming some of these folks up is going to be de rigueur right now, bringing a higher profile and marrying that to directors and writers of a certain quality, I’d relish an era of prestige B-action pictures.
But in the end Skin Trade counts as a mild disappointment; something I built up in my mind as a second coming for action team-up films plays more like a message movie with explosions and a fair amount of cold-blooded murder on the part of our heroes. If you don’t go into it hoping for a revolutionary film, you will find a bunch of fun fights between some of your favorite action icons, a large scale climax complete with compound siege that feels ripped right from 1980s films complete with most of a 1980s budget, and an anti-trafficking agenda that all but the vilest monsters will agree with.
There’s room for a sequel at the end and I’d gladly seek out a Skin Trade 2.
And I’m Out.