Traffik

Traffik

Starring Paula Patton, Omar Epps, Laz Alonso, Luke Goss

Directed by Deon Taylor

Journalist Brea is celebrating her birthday with her longtime boyfriend John at a remote luxurious condo, but before they arrive there they stop at a gas station, where Brea finds a battered woman who, unbeknownst to Brea, slips a phone in her purse.  After arriving at the condo, they're met by fellow friends who celebrate her birthday when the phone rings.  Brea unlocks the phone and finds pictures of battered woman, deducing that it's part of a sex trafficking ring.  The girl arrives for the phone, but Brea refuses to give it back, leading to the leader of the trafficking ring to assault the group.  Brea and her friends find themselves in a fight for their lives as they battle the traffickers and find there's no one else they can trust.

Typically, when it says, "based on true events," I take it for a grain of salt.  While the concept of sex trafficking is unfortunately real (a statistic at the end of the film says there's 1.9 million women being trafficked in the United States alone), everything that happens between the title card and closing credits never occurred.  While the film seemed to want to expose light on this often forgotten crime, it instead seemed to revel in the lewdness of it all, creating more an exploitative film than anything else.

Paula Patton, who also produced the film, gives enough fortitude and strength to make her a believable heroine, even if she does the most dumbfounded moves - in fact, pretty much everyone here makes the stupidest mistakes, leading to a bruised face from too many face palms.  Everything about the film is a stereotype, from the traffickers who are all hillbilly redneck bikers to Brea's friend who's more interested in his own self-interest than anything else.  Even Patton plays to the stereotype of super sleuth journalist, who wastes valuable time trying to upload every single picture to her boss instead of just a few, allowing, of course, the bad guys to get the jump on her.  Even the chemistry between Patton and Omar Epps seem forced, and you don't even believe they're friends let alone lovers, leading you to not really care about their relationship in the first place.

For a film that wants to focus on the sex trafficking ring, there's very little information given to the lives of those girls kidnapped.  Instead, director and writer Deon Taylor seems to use their sexuality as a moving point for the film, including lingering shots on bare midriffs and Daisy Dukes that make you really think about the point of the film in the first place.  All in all, while it seemed to want to express an important issue in the world, it turned into a exploitative work with terrible character development.

Now it's time for the pros and cons of the film, starting with the pros:  Paula Patton gives her all, and the film seems to want to shed light on the real terror of sex trafficking.  For the cons, the film seems to exploit these women more than anything, offering a poorly written script, weak characters, stupid decisions, and an overly simplistic ending to such a wide-ranging event.

Overall, I would give Traffik a D