- Actors: Kris Kristofferson, Trace Adkins, Tom Sizemore, Michael Paré
- Director: Timothy Woodward Jr.
- Format: NTSC, Widescreen
- Language: English
- Number of discs: 1
- Rated: Unrated
- Studio: Cinedigm
- Release Date: August 2, 2016
- Run Time: 99 minutes
When cameras
first became portable enough to shoot outside of studios, there were plenty of
low budget westerns made. Some of them are even considered classics today.
While it has gotten increasingly easy to make movies with limited funds, the
biggest problems with Traded have
less to do with a lack of money and are more about missing talent and
originality. The premise of the film is Taken
in the western genre, as the unimaginative title suggests. It is so close to
the original premise and so riddled with amateur dialogue and performances that
Traded often feels more like a parody
than a sincere effort at filmmaking.
Michael Paré
stars as Clay Travis, an 1880 Kansas
rancher and family man faced with tragedy. After the accidental death of his
son by snakebite, Clay and his wife (Constance Brenneman) mourn their loss. The
audience celebrates the elimination of an awful performance from the child
actor. This loss makes the disappearance of their eldest child even more
devastating, giving Clay additional purpose to retrieve her unharmed. 17-year-old
Lily Travis (Brittany Elizabeth Williams) initially runs away from home to work
as a waitress of sorts in a nearby town, but quickly finds herself taken by a
group of unsavory characters to be sold into prostitution.
Clay sets out to
find his daughter and bring her home, and we quickly discover that he is much
more than just a simple rancher. Lily is passed along from one place to another
and Clay follows her trail, dispatching an assortment of villains along the
way. Tom Sizemore is at ease playing a seedy saloon owner, musician Trace
Adkins is a sharp-shooting brothel owner in Wichita, and Martin Kove is a somewhat
unrelated abusive father that Clay seems to punish out of pure principal.
Clay also
receives some help from decent people along the way, including the teenage girl
being abused by the aforementioned father. Most recognizable, however, is Kris
Kristofferson as a local bartender who offers a few inspirational speeches
before joining Clay in the gunfight. It may be a small role, but
Kristofferson’s presence is welcome, as he may be the only actor strong enough
to survive the stodgy dialogue and amateur direction.
With a cast full
of Kristoffersons, the screenplay by Mark Esslinger may have been easily
dismissed between sequences of action, but the pacing of the film gives
audiences little to focus on other than the stiff delivery of poorly written
dialogue. The action is not exciting or prominent enough to distract from the
film’s other shortcomings, like many other straight-to-video action films
director Timothy Woodward Jr. has made in the past. At least those atrocities
were not period films, but Traded has
a strange digital look that contradicts the period feel it is meant to evoke. Continuity
is also a consistent problem for Woodward, though this also may have been less
noticeable had the pace of the film been less sluggish.
The Blu-ray
release offers no help in hiding the film’s flaws, especially the technical
ones on full display in high definition. Special features include a making of
featurette and two deleted scenes, each with an optional filmmaker commentary
track.
Entertainment Value:
3/10
Quality of
Filmmaking: 2.5/10
Historical
Significance: 0/10
Special Features: 3.5/10
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