HUMAN TRAFFICKING (2005)

Starring Mira Sorvino, Donald Sutherland, Robert Carlyle. Drama. Synopsis: A movie original airing on the Lifetime Network, now on DVD, about the  sale and trafficking of young women, particularly children, for the purposes of sexual favors and sexual slavery. Told against the backdrop of three separate stories woven into one drama that follows a goverment agency on the trail of an international trafficking ring run by a Russian crime boss.

"Human Trafficking" is one of those made for cable movies that tackles a sensitive and serious issue not suitable for family consumption in a way that only a movie can, yet does it without emphasizing or trying to capitalize on the titiallation or gruesome factors in the way that a TV program must.

It is effective and heart wrenching. First, as most would guess but has to be said anyway, this is a movie not a documentary. Having said that, those who were unaware of this issue, or at least its scope, will learn a lot of genuine facts in watching this in the way that you learn from a good, informative documentary.

Mira Sorvino and Donald Sutherland play agents for ICE, the International Customes Enforecement Agency. They are charged with stemming the tide of young girls, some preteens, who are abducted and/or falsely lured to this country, ostensibly to model, be a mail order bride, or some other more innocuous reason, but in reality  for the purpose of forced prostitution.

The film is told with the focus on three young women, one a poor teenage girl from an Eastern European family lured to the U.S. by a phony "modeling" agency, one young woman-also a mother-who was effectively sold into prostitution by her "boyfriend", and the third a preteen American girl who is literally snatched from her parents on the streets of Manila. The film also touches on and reveals the plight of some of the other young women: their various reactions to forced prostitution, in the form of street work, higher class call girls, and/or pornographic movies as well as the means of physical and mental abuse that keeps them relatively docile and subjugated.

Although this is not an easy film to watch-no matter who or where we are, or what our political/religious affiliations might be, I've long been of the opinion that the abuse of children is the one thing that we all agree on as an unspeakable evil without qualification-but it does not get too lurid with showing us the actual sexual abuse of children. It is, however, strongly implied and we do see the mental and physical abuse, with the younger children mostly in the form of denial of adequate food and medical care.

You also get to see the ones who make this possible, the crime lords (played very effectively by Robert Carlyle as a Russian mob figure with an extensive syndicate here in the U.S.), their collaborators, the well meaning but ignorant families that allow their young girls to pursue "jobs" or "careers". One poignant scene shows the child pimps approaching a subsistence farmer, literally living in a nineteenth century type hovel with his wife and several children, and offer him more money than he has probably ever seen for his daughter. You see the look in his-a man who has probably done more manual labor in his life than 10 average Americans combine-  eyes as he now, maybe for the first time, has more than enough to feed and clothe the rest of his family, at the expense of his precious daughter. No, I'm not saying you will feel sorry for him , or that his actions are not disgusting, but it is done in such a way as to make us understand the crushing poverty and hopelessness in some countries-particularly Asian nations and former Eastern European bloc countries-that would make this type of thing not totally uncommon.

You also see the other side of it, US children snatched off the streets and the huge uphill battle that has to be fought to find them in countries where the infrastructure is not nearly aas conducive to finding criminals...particularly when those criminals pay very well.

The buyers of these exploited women and children are shown as well...yes, the stereotypical dirty old men are represented, but you also see the yuppy types at 6 figure mansions, and one particularly disgusting American doctor, who is seeking a little something different on his vacation to the Phillipines.

The heroes are there, too. The mother of the American child who refuses to leave the Phillipines or rest until she has found her daughter, the father of the teen age girl lured from Europe who comes to America with no clue as to find his daughter, but immerses himself in the child sex culture as a enforcer, in hopes that he will cross paths with her, and, of course, the tireless work of the government agents, played wonderfully by Sorvino and Sutherland.

These are fictional accounts, but they are the type of stories and done in such a way as to make it obvious that such things can and do occur. The international scope of the film shows how difficult the problem is, but it also that, like all problems that are human in creation, there is a solution, not just from the government, but from all of us. Any child that we can help-in any way: Little League coaching, den mother, crossing guard, whatever-whether our child or not, is one child that is just a little less likely to fall prey to these perverts. And, for those of us unable to do those kinds of things, just keeping your eyes and ears open, especially in larger cities, can help, or giving any extra $10, $100 or whatever-one time or on a regular basis, it all helps-, to one of the many private organizations that do so much to help exploited children. Anything helps.

Well, the purpose of this blog is not to be preachy, but that is the effect a film like this can have. And, you won't forget it.