Paradise Highway (2022)

A truck driver (Juliette Binoche) reluctantly agrees to smuggle a young child (Hala Finley) across state lines as a favor to her brother (Frank Grillo) who is in prison. After a deadly killing, she soon realizes that she's inadvertently involved in sex trafficking minors. Written and directed by Anna Gutto in her directorial debut. Using sex trafficking as the basis of a thriller seems exploitative to me. Considering its provocative subject, the movie is surprisingly turgid. Its antecedent seems to be GLORIA (1980) in which Gena Rowlands takes on the mob to protect a little Puerto Rican boy. Here, Binoche takes on that role but the film is flabby where it should be lean. Frankly, I found the other storyline with Morgan Freeman as an old school grizzled detective on the case and his Yale partner (Cameron Monaghan) more interesting than Binoche's tired storyline. Very watchable but not very memorable. With Veronica Ferres and Christiane Seidel.