Traffic

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Film Description

Soderbergh's multi-layered account of the Drug War bravely comes up with no easy answers. Everyone is hooked on something. Shot with invention, written with intelligence, del Toro is great. Undoubtedly one of the most powerful films from recent years. Soderbergh poignantly tackles the US drugs war from all angles: Benicio Del Toro is brilliant as the frustrated Mexican Policeman who is unable to enforce a law around him due to the power of the drug trade. Michael Douglas is at his best as the American politician trying to cope with his daughter’s smack habit and Catherine Zeta Jones is strong as the level headed wife of the convicted drug tycoon. With beautiful photography, sharp editing and a chilling soundtrack, this is Soderbergh’s masterpiece.

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Deleted scenes; theatrical trailers; b-roll and soundbites.

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Review by James Biddell on 8th April 2002

Undoubtedly one of the most powerful films from recent years. Soderbergh poignantly tackles the US drugs war from all angles: Benicio Del Toro is brilliant as the frustrated Mexican Policeman who is unable to enforce a law around him due to the power of the drug trade. Michael Douglas is at his best as the American politician trying to cope with his daughter’s smack habit and Catherine Zeta Jones is strong as the level headed wife of the convicted drug tycoon. With beautiful photography, sharp editing and a chilling soundtrack, this is Soderbergh’s masterpiece.

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Review by Mike McCahill on 28th February 2002

The director Steven Soderbergh here proves himself amongst the most intelligent and industrious of people currently working in the American film industry: not only is Traffic, a multi-layered exploration of the workings of the drug business and how deep U.S. narcotic policy runs, his third film in the space of just fourteen months, but - after the fragmented The Limey and the slick Erin Brockovich - this new film demonstrates just how well he can mix and match his projects to suit his individual tastes. Traffic has enough major stars to make it a Top Three U.S. hit, but also tackles the kinds of serious issues and personal, political writing more commonly found in much smaller projects.

Like a Robert Altman or Paul Thomas Anderson film, there's a multitude of speaking parts and a lot of plotting, but the key figures are newly-appointed drug czar Douglas, sent out to formulate a new policy from Washington but blind to his daughter (Christiansen)'s addiction until it's too late; a couple of surveillance cops, Don Cheadle and Luis Guzman; a high society wife (Zeta Jones), whose life is turned upside down when her husband is busted on a smuggling charge; and laid-back Mexican beat detective Del Toro, whose involvement with the movers-and-shakers south of the border proves that matters are just as complicated down there. Its method is that of cops working an investigation, so Soderbergh flips freely from location to location and from story to story before certain names begin to show up over and over in each of the different pieces and we begin to follow the leads which might connect the major players: for example, the unlikely-but-winning partnership of mercurial Cheadle and tubby Guzman, first seen taking down mid-level narc trafficker Miguel Ferrer, are working the case which sees the society wife's husband in court, and Del Toro, boxed in on all sides by corruption and secrecy, sits in on one of the drugs czar's briefings when the minister ventures into Mexico.

The best compliment you could pay to the principals (and to the director's work with those principals) is that each strand carries its own weight (Zeta Jones, with an unexpected ruthless streak, is a major surprise as a Lady Macbeth with lemonade), but Soderbergh even gets top-level actors (Albert Finney, Amy Irving, Salma Hayek) in support parts. This, perhaps, is a nod in the direction of Michael Mann (Heat, The Insider), whose casts have always tended to stock quality in depth, and - with its minimal ambient soundtrack and stylised lighting effects - Traffic noticeably starts to resemble the best Michael Mann film Mann himself did not direct; certainly Soderbergh's film disseminates as much information on its chosen, insidious subject matter as Mann's The Insider did on the tobacco industry last year, particularly in the sequences where Douglas interviews real-life congressmen, officials and other men in suits. Stephen Gaghan's script proves as good on the tensions which break up families as it is on those between opposing drug cartels, and, for its first half at least, seems crammed with jokes and anecdotes, distractions his characters use to pass the time - exactly the type of short-termism the movie seeks to critique on a political level.

Its sobering aftermath seems a little too neat, but the film's last hour is mostly chilling punchlines rather than easy resolutions, suggesting that it's the wrong people who are getting hurt in "the war on drugs", and Soderbergh gets two moments of brilliance from the changing expressions on his leads' faces: Douglas has an excruciating speech at a White House press conference in which it becomes uncomfortably clear that he doesn't believe in a word he's saying, and the look on Cheadle's face as he walks away from the house of the man who has continually eluded his efforts to bring him to justice is worthy of the ticket price alone.

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Review by anonymous on

Soderbergh's multi-layered account of the Drug War bravely comes up with no easy answers. Everyone is hooked on something. Shot with invention, written with intelligence, del Toro is great.

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