Given Hollywood’s profitable global reach, from Seoul multiplexes to the red carpet in Cannes, and all the American films being shot abroad on the cheap these days, it might seem odd that an isolationist streak has crept into the movies. But what is the message of last year’s highly praised “Babel,” not to mention the recent passel of gore-soaked, foreign-set horror flicks, if not “stay home”?

It is possible that the planet’s increasing interconnectedness might, in time, smooth over conflicts of language, religion, and skin color, or rectify the planet’s lopsided distribution of wealth. But you wouldn’t know it from watching code-red movies like “Babel,” “Hostel,” and now “Trade,” which comes out today.

“Trade” is a sex-trafficking thriller set (and shot) on both sides of the American-Mexican border. The cast hails from many different countries and the director is Marco Kreuzpaintner, a German. Like superior predecessors “Traffic” and “Blood Diamond,” this international production is pegged to a particularly unsavory channel of the global free market, and in case you were wondering, yes — it’s one of those movies that insist on brandishing a few statistics before cutting to the end credits.

“Trade” is a decent film, though somewhat misguided. Written by Jose Rivera and Peter Landesman, it is a B-movie at heart, a meaty slice of exploitation entertainment. But it’s also based — albeit loosely — on a 2004 exposé Mr. Landesman wrote for the New York Times, and it has a grim sense of social responsibility that partly explains why it’s so stirring one moment and so heavy-handed the next.

Small-time hoodlum Jorge (Cesar Ramos) is essentially a good guy. He gleefully robs tourists in the back alleys of Mexico City, but uses the money to buy his sister Adriana (Paulina Gaitan) a new bike. When she disappears, the apparent victim of a kidnapping, he goes to a local gangster to find out who’s responsible. “Béstias,” the don tells him. In other words, the Russians. “You ever heard of globalization?” the don adds. “That’s them!”

The Russians also dupe a young Polish woman named Veronica (Alicja Bachleda-Curus) into thinking they’re an agency that will find her legitimate work in Los Angeles. One look at the guy picking her up at the airport, and you can tell that helping people is not the business they’re in. One moment she hands over her passport, the next she’s locked in an apartment, being beaten and raped and then holding terrified Adriana in her arms.

Then they’re heading toward America in the back of a truck. Jorge follows the traffickers to an abandoned building, where he spies a middle-aged American man (Kevin Kline) snooping around. Unsure what to do, he hides in the man’s trunk and climbs out on the other side of the border. It turns out the American, named Ray, is an undercover cop investigating the disappearance of his own daughter; the two of them, unlikely as it seems, are on the same trail, and it ends in a stash house in New Jersey.

Between Mexico and the Garden State, a decent thriller takes shape, even if there’s nothing particularly novel about it. One bad guy gets killed, another finds redemption, and a tragedy befalls one of their quarry; the border patrol and crime-fighting establishment, staffed by impassive bureaucrats, does little more than get in the way. Mr. Kreuzpaintner packs the screen with hackneyed symbols of innocence lost: Adriana’s pink bike in the street, old dolls, a discarded bouquet. For each stirring moment there’s a real head-smacker, as when Veronica temporarily evades her captors and leaves the safety of a busy street to make a phone call from an abandoned parking lot.

Mr. Kreuzpaintner pulls more emotional strings than he needs to, and struggles to heat scenes without burning them. (His previous film, the German-language coming-out drama “Summerstorm,” was sincere but similarly overcooked.) Thankfully, the cool-headed Mr. Kline — gruff and deliberate here, and frowning much more than usual — helps keep the film rooted in reality.

There’s something glib and unpleasant, however, in the film’s political critique. “Welcome to America,” a smuggler (Marco Perez) sardonically tells his captives after forcing them across the Rio Grande. No sooner has he said it than police lights start flashing and a cop barks into a loudspeaker. Touché. (The film’s unflattering German title translates as “Welcome to America.”)

Parts of “Trade” will keep you glued to your seat, but not all of it. It’s during these less convincing moments that you realize the film’s familiar and fashionable treatment of its subject doesn’t do the sex-slavery cause much good. You start to see it subtly using this serious real-world concern as a dramatic crutch. Exploitation has always been a part of cinema’s primeval force, but exploitation of this sort is a bit much.