Cargo

Although the screenplay by Vizinberg and Lee Peterkin holds little in the way of surprises, it does offer a taut storyline and complex characterizations.

The film leans almost exclusively on the focused performances of its two leads, who create a credibly barbed chemistry that goes a long way toward distracting us from the film's low-budget deficiencies.

Cargo can feel like a "film about human trafficking" from beginning to end.

Its provocative subject matter, though seriously treated, qualifies it as a dark-horse candidate for latenight cable.

With the certainty of bad melodrama, Cargo moves gradually into superficial moral complexity, an inevitable display of heroics, and the perfunctory title card ensuring us that sex slavery is indeed a real-life problem.