Recent newspaper articles in Ireland have highlighted our country’s part in the international sex trade – a business now with as many international tentacles as the drugs trade. In this low budget thriller arriving here a year after its release in most other territories, the storyline follows the kidnap of 13-year-old Mexican girl Adriana (Paulina Gaitan) by a gang with the intent of selling her virginity to the highest bidder. A disenfranchised Polish girl, Veronica (Alicja Bachleda), lured by hope for a better life abroad is also held captive by the same men, and becomes Adriana’s only solace as she is taken farther and farther away from home.
Meanwhile, Adriana’s older brother, Jorge (Cesar Ramos), begins to track his sister across the Mexican border into Texas and through the United States. On his mission, he runs into a Texas cop named Ray (Kevin Kline) who agrees to help him. What follows is a cat-and-mouse road trip across America as the good guys pursue the slavers on route to a final showdown in New Jersey.
Just before the final credits roll, the screen fills with the horrendous sex slave statistics behind an industry already prevalent across the Western world. While the film itself is weak and lacking anything of the docu-drama power of Steven Soderberg’s Traffic or Liam Neeson’s latest, Taken, it does at least force one to uneasily ponder how a criminal enterprise with its roots across the world has now become another commonplace criminal activity in this country.
