Cargo (I) (2011) User Reviews

Exceeded my meagre expectations but not by much

[Robert_duder · 6/10 · 21 October 2012]

I am not even sure Cargo can be classified as a horror flick although certainly the DVD cover would have you believe this was yet another Saw knock off, torture flick. So I suppose with the recent plethora of cheesy horror flicks I have seen my expectations were bare minimum going into this. The film isn't amazing, I would never state that, but it does however actually impress in a number of ways. It turns out the story is actually unique and the film isn't incredibly gory (although certainly disturbing at times) and likely done a very low budget but due to the concept of the film it really doesn't matter and you won't notice the budgetary constraints. The biggest issue I have with the film is that the core idea is really quite brilliant but is left completely unexplored. The turning point of the captor and the captive connecting at a deeper level never really happens. Its like they forgot to include that conversation or the progression to that point and the captor just all of a sudden decides to protect her and that was really unfortunate because the film could have had a brilliant concept.

Newcomer Natasha Rinis does a solid job at playing the human trafficking victim. She displays a lot of emotion and still gives a strong female performance in a vital role. I think her lack of experience though leaves some of her scenes lacking certain strength. Sayed Badreya plays her captor responsible for delivering her to the purchasers. He is sort of quiet and understated but shows some strength when necessary. Perhaps the biggest problem with the film is I don't think the chemistry between Badreya and Rinis is strong enough. If the two actors had strong chemistry, really playing off of each other then it could have really been something. Instead the acting between them is really sub par.

Director, co-writer and cinematographer Yan Vizinberg does an okay job. I'm just really disappointed that with a real experienced film crew behind this and much, much better marketing the film could have actually really been impressive. Instead, what is left is lost potential but a surprisingly watchable thriller. Horror fans most likely will be disappointed but the fact that I had such low expectations and it managed to at least exceed that. Certainly not the worst but won't blow you away either. 6/10

Cargo - brief

[user-142-632625 · 5/10 · 25 October 2014]

Space SciFi from the Swiss. The exhausted planet Earth has been mostly abandoned. Folks are saving coins and heading for Rhea, a great new world. Travel takes eight years in massive cryogenic / cargo ships. After three years, our heroine is roused to be bulky suited, glorified patrol guard, prowling the vast emptiness of dim corridors. Why? There is a stowaway loose, endangering lives and the ship. Gradually, darker discoveries emerge. Several CGI shots, luckily kept to a minimum. Unoriginal plot. Decent, post industrial "wet" sets (just curious, why doesn't leaking water freeze in space? heating a massive vessel so that water puddles about strikes me as a colossal waste of energy. sorry). Not a bad film, but not a good one, either. Predictable, derivative.

I WANT TO GO HOME

[nogodnomasters · 4/10 · 16 April 2019]

Natasha (Natasha Rinis) travels to Mexico from Russia. She is taken into slavery and sold as a prostitute to NYC. The film consists of her van ride from Houston to NYC and her fight to break out of an Econoline. The purpose of the film is to bring attention to the problem of forced prostitution by making us watch a road trip.

Works as a drama if you like a bad Lifetime film.

Guide: F-bomb. Nudity. Implied sex.

A much better film was Abduction of Eden, 2012.

[suite92 · 1/10 · 23 March 2014]

Natasha arrives in Mexico thinking a job is lined up for her in New York. A driver picks her up, gets the number of a close relative, then takes her passport. Yikes! It's time to get the passport back, then run screaming away, whatever it takes.

Natasha does not do that. She gets thrown into a prison with other kidnapped women who are soon to become enslaved sex workers. After some time, she's sent off to Brooklyn with Sayed. When Sayed finally lets her out to use the toilet at a gas station, she hits him over the head and tries to run. Sayed beats her up, then ties her up. He continues toward New York.

Natasha is discouraged when she has to urinate in the van. When Sayed gets to a truck stop, he listens to her banging and weeping while he rolls something to smoke. He gets enraged when she kicks out a window. He tapes her into the front seat.

"I'm just a driver," says Sayed. Sure, Sayed, you have no moral culpability for your active participation in the slave trade. Soon after, he stops to pray, pointing to Mecca. After this, Natasha tries to bond with Sayed, telling him how she gave a man in Russia 3,000 USD to get an opportunity with an agency in New York. The money plus her flying to Mexico was all she needed, or so she thought.

This is where the movie lost my interest. The slave bonding with the slaver? If you enjoy lying, cat and mouse games, cheap shots and gratuitous violence, you'll like the rest of the film.

Does Natasha escape? Do any of the slavers get brought to justice?

-----Scores------

Cinematography: 7/10 Mostly OK.

Sound: 7/10 I could hear the lines spoken. Music was mercifully minimal.

Acting: 0/10 I would have liked to have seen some acting in this two-character film. One might as well have teleprompter messages instead of people mouthing words. Neither was believable, even when they revealed that they had been lying previously. Who cares? This goes beyond the rottenness of the screenplay. The bit players were almost as bad as the principals.

Screenplay: 0/10 Sayed's self-righteousness is utter and complete nonsense. His belief that all enslaved women are whores is rubbish. I could have done without his hatred of the United States. I could have done without his endless self-serving lies. Natasha was about the dullest tool in the shed, and was not engaging. She had opportunities to ditch her kidnapper, and she did not. His physical brutality seemed about right on for a vicious kidnapper and slaver, which made his lies all the more foul. -- Anyway, the screenplay was repellent, but to no good end whatsoever. -- The ending was the worst part, since the rest of the film did nothing to justify it.

Human Trafficking

[andy-19-834008 · 7/10 · 24 April 2011]

At last film makers are uncovering the despicable trade of human trafficking. In this film a girl is smuggled to America, she is faceless, lost and unprotected. It is the same theme as the excellent films TAKEN which was set in France, and FREIGHT which was set in the UK. This happens, that is what makes these films uncomfortable to watch. They are the area of life that politicians can gain nothing from tackling, but these great film makers do. Well done. The horror the girl feels is very real which makes this different from Taken. In Taken we follow Liam Neeson's character as a hero, here we see the pain of the girl as we do in the UK film Freight. Somehow that perspective is so much more powerful, and it hurts. You feel the girls pain.

Draws The Viewer In To The Plight Of The Victim. Well Done.

[sddavis63 · 7/10 · 24 January 2015]

A movie that manages to draw you into the plight of its protagonist and that turns her into not just an object of sympathy, but actually allows the viewer to feel her plight, has to be considered a success. "Cargo" managed to do that, both on the strength of the story and on the wonderful and powerful performance from Natasha Rinis.

Rinis' character (also named Natasha) is a young Russian woman who is convinced to travel to America to live her dream of being a famous model. She realizes things aren't right almost from the start. She arrives not in the US but Mexico, is forced by suspicious characters to turn over her passport and then smuggled across the border and imprisoned in a basement with other girls from whom she learns that she's to be forced into the sex trade. Here's where the movie took an unexpected (to me) turn. I thought the story would follow the misery of her life as a trafficked sex worker. Instead, Natasha is turned over to a driver named Sayed (played by Sayed Badreya) whose job is to deliver her to a scumbag in New York City, where her fate will be ... who knows.

The movie revolves almost entirely around the journey of these two. Natasha is abused and terrified - but she's also strong and smart. After failing to escape a couple of times she starts to try to build an alliance with Sayed, to gain his sympathy. Sayed, on the other hand, is a contradictory character himself. A devout Muslim, who regularly stops the journey to pray, he finally confesses to Natasha that he doesn't like making money this way, but he has no choice. The evolution of the relationship between the two is interesting to watch.

Unfortunately, it's also the evolution of this relationship that weakens the movie in the end. You spend the whole movie rooting for Natasha and admiring her strength and courage, but in the end it's Sayed who kind of emerges as the hero, as Nastasha is rescued. After the way the movie had progressed, I wanted Natasha to find her own means of escape. This doesn't detract from the character's strength, but it just didn't fit what I wanted to see. And it made Sayed a bit of a heroic figure in the end. I appreciate the portrayal of his transformation, but it was Natasha who needed to come out in the end as the hero. Still, even if the ending wasn't as satisfying as it could or should have been, this was a very powerful and very sombre movie that does portray something that, sadly, happens more often than we care to think of. (7/10)

Unexpected surprised.

[vonnahwill · 8/10 · 24 August 2013]

I thought this would be like most human trafficking films. But Cargo surprised me. I felt it was more about getting to know the main characters than anything else. We learned their story, we got to understand them. For the most part, the film took place in one setting, but that was fine by me, especially considering the dialogue that was being exchanged through this setting. The characters had a bond, whether you notice or not, it's there. Both actors were fantastic. Natasha Rinis actually made me tear up a little, because she let us feel what she was going through. I would like to see her in more films, giving that same emotion. The same with Sayed Badreya, great work. Cargo surprised me a lot.

I would be interesting in more of the writers/directors work. 8/10 rating and I would recommend.

A tense, decent film.

[RatedVforVinny · 7/10 · 4 February 2019]

Not nearly as nasty or indeed as powerful as the 'Seasoning House' but still a memorable and worthy, social comment on sexual slavery. A grubby subject, ultimately hidden deep within the criminal underworld and mostly untouched by the authorities. The lead actress, in what would be the very toughest of roles, is very good and convincing.

Excellent, Better Than Expected

[oyayemaja · 10/10 · 8 March 2013]

I will strive not to give any spoilers. This movie from the start had my full attention. It saddened me to witness how possibly easy it is to get tricked into a life of trafficking and how human life can mean so little to some people. It's a story about women who get abducted and traded like property and also what will cause a woman with no faith to finally reach out to God.

A lot of the time it wasn't even in English but you still fully understand what is going on. I think this movie is superb because during most of the movie, your only dealing with two characters, but their performance is so great that it keeps you emotionally drawn in.