Skin Trade (2014)

Actually--can you believe it?--it turned out to be good! Lundgren was persuasive--although when he shows his eyes you can see the man is not a full-fledged actor, for when he does so he can't help revealing his, and not his character's, character. Nevertheless, he's very likable. The rest of the cast, like Lundgren, are in top form.

Every time I think I've seen the movie with the worst writing in history, one like this comes along and takes the new top spot. Dolph wrote, produced, and starred in this vehicle for himself, so he's the main culprit. Many times I paused to look up something happening in this movie on tvtropes.com - you know, clichés like the hero ripping out his IV to escape the hospital and go after the bad guys, the bad guy revealing crucial information with his dying breath, everyone's inability to land any bullets on major characters, etc etc etc...and some of the lines are so hackneyed and cheesy that they don't even provide camp value.But anyone watching this probably won't care. We all came to see Tony Jaa, Michael Jai White, and Dolph Lundren kick a ton of ass, and that they do. They all go after each other, and the fighting comes with the slick power of Tony's muay thai we're all used to along with incredibly gritty, dark, gruesome physicality/violence that has a Hong-Kong-cinema flair.So get your buds together, have plenty of alcohol (needed for the writing/plot), and laugh at the exposition while taking in the electric action.~~ P.S. If you even care, watch it with subtitles. The accents, both real and fake, make the English spoken in this film almost unrecognizable. Ron Perlman adopts a hilarious Slavic accent to play his Serbian character, Celina Jade (who is perfectly trilingual in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin) is forced to use a stereotypical Vietnamese accent that she really struggles with (in fact, during her scene with Ron, the two start to emulate each others accents by law of proximity!), Thai star Tony Jaa is speaking English like he has a gun to his head (quite literally in some scenes), and Dolph is a native Swede, though his English has gotten way better over the years. I guess that makes Michael Jai White the linguistic straight man.

So I think most of the gripe with audiences for this movie is how the movie deals with human traficking. While also blending in martial arts and fighting into the equation. C'mon now, there has been plenty of other films that deals with this type of material but goes in a very pretentious and superficial direction as well. Where the human trafficking elements is just there for shock value more than awareness of the situation. Sure the story has some plot holes and a lot of character decisions, especially when it comes to the action sequences doesn't make much sense. Actually doesn't make much sense at all during certain points. However, this isn't a awful movie and for practically a straight to DVD movie it's actually quite watchable. The plot is pretty much a cliché action cop movie. Where one guy who is framed or pushed to the limits is on the run and a hardboiled cop is trying to track him down. The main reason I wanted to check this movie out is because it has Tony Jaa, Michael Jai White in a action movie. Sure, the characters really aren't fleshed out or developed enough for the audiences to really care. Plus the acting is really bad. But you get what you practically except. Such as the face off between Tony Jaa and Dolph Lundgren and Michael Jai White. The production value is also solid enough for a B movie.6.5/10

Here we have a 90-minute (without credits) movie from last year that got its wide release in 2015. It stars Scandinavion action hero Dolph Lundgren and Tony Jaa who you may or may not have seen in the "Ong Bak" films. I personally thought the first half of this film was the best part, even if it just some kind of prologue with Lundgren's character almost being killed before he goes on his revenge path. Afterward, every cliché is somewhat included. Corrupt cops, ruthless revenge, Asisnas fighting in martial arts, the Asian and the Scandinavion guy fighting side-by-side after initially going against each other.For me, the best part was probably Ron Perlman, but I am a bit biased here. I hope we will get a 3rd Hellboy film one day. "Skin Trade" ended a bit on a cliffhanger, so maybe they will make a sequel at some point where he keeps looking for his daughter. I am not so sure if I will watch it though. Perlman's character is gone and I will probably only give it a go if they include another great villain that I like, Mel Gibson for example. Four people worked on the screenplay (including Lundgren himself for the first time in 5 years) and it is a bit generic and uncreative for that I have to say. Also I did not like the final message displayed about human trafficking, which somehow implies that the movie takes itself far more seriously than it should. Hands down, this could never have turned out as a quality drama or thriller movie, so this felt a bit unwarranted. Still, it's not a totally bad watch by any means. It has its moments for sure. But not enough of these to let me recommend it. The second half of the film drifts too deep into action sequences with fighting and shooting etc. and the story is hurt by it. Not recommended.