With the discredited blockbuster sham “Sound of Freedom” still fresh on everyone’s mind, critics can be excused for steering clear “City of Dreams,” another human trafficking tale, this one about Mexican kids lured to America only to be trapped in sweatshops, coal mines, meat packing plants and sex work.

Writer-director Mohit Ramchandani (“The Lost Tribe”) wisely kept his story and his “white savior” character, a cop (Jason Patric) fictional in a tale that suggests the police and prosecutors turn a blind eye when it comes to the grey market “cheap clothing” industry that props up fashion and much of the world’s economy.

While the film gets quasi-bipartisan political in its closing credits, and Republican hustler Vivek Ramaswamy got behind it as a producer, cynically hoping to hype “the border crisis,” all you really need to know about its agenda is in the last minute title change it underwent before release.

It was called “Wall Street Silver,” but we can’t offend the fat cats underwriting efforts to undo child labor laws, can we?

Still, Ramchandani delivers a dazzling third act chase, on foot, through L.A.’s sweatshop district, a nervy, hand-held sprint that finally gets this static story up on its feet. That’s followed by a breathless finale that frustrates in all the right cinematic ways.

His movie starts slow and settles into ponderous before this. But Ramchandani is to be commended for at least trying to give his villains a point of view — the South of the Border ones were lured here with the same promises and “dream,” only to be trapped torturing and enslaving children. If you want to buy that excuse.

Ari Lopez stars as Jesús, a mute tween with soccer dreams, which his widowed father indulges by arranging to send him north to what the child expects to be an L.A. Cosmos soccer camp.

Dad’s parting words are about about the child’s mother dying in childbirth, the shaman who attended (and lit 1464 candles) and made predictions and warnings. The child will be haunted by images of this demonic figure in Aztec garb for the rest of his days.

The gay coyote Rodrigo (Francisco Denis) loads the kid into his Mustang convertible and hustles him north — not without expenses, and not without a police stop (Patric and Adina Eady play partners) that raises suspicions just a couple of miles from the child’s destination.

The boy’s passport and the fact that he’s A) mute and B) drugged give the officer no grounds to hold anybody. But Sgt. Stevens smells a child smuggling rat.

The sweatshop is run by El Jefe (Alfredo Castro) and managed by hair-triggered young punk Cesar (Andrés Delgado). There are overlords over them. And every so often, a mysterious beauty (Paulina Gaitan) shows up to pluck prettier children from their ranks for grooming in sex work.

But Sgt. Stevens can’t get the idea that the creep in the Mustang was taking that child to his doom.

As Jesús struggles to adjust to the work, to co-workers still harboring the illusion that El Jefe’s promise of “promotion” if they hit their quotas, to the lashings, beatings and threats, he meets Elena (Renata Vaca) and falls for her.

That’s a lot to work in, with Jesús sneaking about about getting a taste of the whole sordid “operation” and Stevens getting into trouble at work for hassling L.A.’s underground slave-labor economy.

Ramchandani doesn’t so much guide us through all this as get through it. His film lumbers along in lurches, with misguided detours (A love story? Really?) and a determined effort to invest us in the boy’s fate and frustrate the hell out of us over that.

That pays off. Eventually.

And as it does, we go further up the food chain to see the Russian-backed garment makers (Samm Levine plays the scion of one such sweatshopworks), the pressures on those down the ladder and the efforts by police higher-ups to leave this criminally irresponsible industry alone.

The kid is good, Patric is properly stoic and assorted heavies (Diego Calva as a cutthroat sweatshop sewer stands out) make good impressions.

But the flashbacks to the boy’s soccer dreams and shaman nightmares become more distractions than plot-advancing background color.

There’s no “border crisis” messaging, just a closing political montage showing all the figures who have spoken out about this problem, most of them avoiding the “cheap food/coal/clothes” engine driving it.

Nobody tells an obvious whopper, nobody comes out and lies about which political party is more concerned about this “crisis” than the other, or which one actually is looking for solutions..

That makes for a factually defensible movie, but also a slow-footed wallow in abuse, exploitation and violence that only comes to life for the third act.

Rating: R, graphic violence, nudity, sex, profanity

Cast: Ari Lopez, Diego Calva, Renata Vaca, Paulina Gaitan, Francisco Denis, Samm Levine,
Andrés Delgado, Adina Eady, Alfredo Castro and Jason Patric

Credits: Scripted and directed by Mohit Ramchandani. A Roadside Attractions release.

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