"Traffic" Rated R
*****/*****
Stephen Soderbergh's new film paints a picture of a horrid world. In this world many people's lives are dominated by illegal substances. Drugs control their actions. In this world many people die not only as an effect of the drugs but as a causality of the war on drugs. This is a violent world: there is violence between rival manufacturers and distributors, between traffickers and police men, and between pushers and users. This world is very striking, yet even more striking is that it is the one we live in today.
Traffic shows us the complex world of the drug trade. It shows it from the top of the chain to the bottom: from manufacturer to distributor, to consumer and at each stage the authorities trying to stop it. It traces the drug chain from Tijuana, Mexico, across the boarder to San Diego, and over to the political struggle in Washington, DC.
Specifically, the film centers on several parallel stories. It starts off with the tale of an ambitious Mexican cop (played beautifully by Benicio Del Toro) and his partner trying to stop drug cartels in Tijuana. Next is the story of the newly appointed United States drug czar (played just as well by Michael Douglas) and his daughter (Erika Christensen) who habitually uses drugs with her friends. Then it moves on to the story of Helena Ayala (Catherine Zeta Jones) whose husband is arrested for drug trafficking. While she at first knows nothing about her husband’s busness, she quickly becomes entangled and eventually attempts to have the star witness in her husbands trial killed. Meanwhile two Drug Enforcment Agency cops (Don Cheadle and Luiz Guzman) try to protect that same witness in order to catch bigger criminals. All these stories are seamlessly woven together by Soderbergh to make the difficult subject much more comprehensible.
This is an excellent film for many reasons. First, it doesn’t shove an opinion in the viewer’s face. It presents information and lets the viewer draw his own conclusions from it. It shows; it doesn’t tell. It presents information; it doesn't editorialize. Also, this is probably the most incredible ensemble cast ever assembled. One performance is better than next. Del Toro, Douglas, Cheadle, Zeta Jones, and even newcomer Christensen are all fantastic. There is not one questionable performance in this entire movie. Despite all of that, the best aspect of this film is Soderbergh’s direction. He uses jerky handheld camera work and drowns out almost all the color leaving a single abrasive tone that makes the film as gritty as its subject.
Soderbergh has thoroughly succeeded in creating a powerful, risky, sweeping epic on such a controversial subject, and manages to leave a somewhat positive note. Although the film subtly concludes that the war against drugs is a futile war, there is a glimmer of hope. And that hope is that if we stay together as a family and help each other, we might overcome the odds. Like Roger Ebert said about the film "The problem is like a punching bag. You can hammer it all day and still it hangs there, impassive, unchanged."
