Director Steven Soderbergh's latest film, "Traffic," covers the US/Mexican War on Drugs-specifically, cocaine-from several different angles. Three separate but interconnected storylines show dealers, users, cops, smugglers, lawyers, government officials-everyone but the South American growers.
We get to hear the arguments on all sides and see the impacts on many people's lives-innocent, guilty, and everywhere in between. But in an early scene when Erika Christensen takes her first hit of freebase, the look of sheer bliss on her face sends the message that this war is already lost. As long as something can give people this kind of high, they won't care about how much it costs them and not all the laws and governments on Earth will keep it from getting to them.
The cast is large, full of good actors in juicy roles-Michael Douglas, Benecio Del Toro, Dennis Quaid, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Don Cheadle, Luis Guzman, Miguel Ferrer, to name a few. Newcomers Christensen and Topher Grace stand out as spoiled teenage cokeheads. And if you look carefully, you can spot brief appearances by Albert Finney, Salma Hayek, James Brolin, and Benjamin Bratt. There are also cameos at a cocktail party by a real-life governor and five senators, at least one of whom (Orrin Hatch) has since denounced the film.
Each storyline is photographed in a different style-all shot by Soderbergh himself, with a hand-held camera, under the pseudonym Peter Andrews. Cincinnati and Washington are blue, hard, and cold; Mexico is overexposed, dusty, and brown-filtered; and San Diego is warm and soft-focused. At times I thought the jerky camera movement and jump cut editing started to get pretentiously artsy and distracting, but the story and the characters always pulled me back in.
The script by Stephen Gaghan-based on a 1990 British TV miniseries-may use situations and character types familiar to us from years of TV cop shows and other movies, but Soderbergh and the cast make them seem fresh and exciting again. For a change, style and substance work together, not against each other. It was like when I saw DePalma's "Scarface" or the series "Miami Vice" for the first time.
The only time my credulity was challenged was when drug czar Douglas went looking for his addict daughter in the worst-and apparently all-black-part of Cincinnati, kicking down doors and threatening an armed dealer himself. The guy's supposed to be a popular, hard-nosed, law-and-order judge. Surely he could've found some sympathetic cops to handle the rough stuff for him. This, for me, was the only scene where the movie took a turn for the stupid. And, to the film's credit, this stupid behavior almost gets Douglas killed.
Soderbergh got my attention three years ago with "Out of Sight" and knocked me out again last year with "Erin Brockovich". He fully deserves all the nominations and awards he's been getting lately. >
We get to hear the arguments on all sides and see the impacts on many people's lives-innocent, guilty, and everywhere in between. But in an early scene when Erika Christensen takes her first hit of freebase, the look of sheer bliss on her face sends the message that this war is already lost. As long as something can give people this kind of high, they won't care about how much it costs them and not all the laws and governments on Earth will keep it from getting to them.
The cast is large, full of good actors in juicy roles-Michael Douglas, Benecio Del Toro, Dennis Quaid, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Don Cheadle, Luis Guzman, Miguel Ferrer, to name a few. Newcomers Christensen and Topher Grace stand out as spoiled teenage cokeheads. And if you look carefully, you can spot brief appearances by Albert Finney, Salma Hayek, James Brolin, and Benjamin Bratt. There are also cameos at a cocktail party by a real-life governor and five senators, at least one of whom (Orrin Hatch) has since denounced the film.
Each storyline is photographed in a different style-all shot by Soderbergh himself, with a hand-held camera, under the pseudonym Peter Andrews. Cincinnati and Washington are blue, hard, and cold; Mexico is overexposed, dusty, and brown-filtered; and San Diego is warm and soft-focused. At times I thought the jerky camera movement and jump cut editing started to get pretentiously artsy and distracting, but the story and the characters always pulled me back in.
The script by Stephen Gaghan-based on a 1990 British TV miniseries-may use situations and character types familiar to us from years of TV cop shows and other movies, but Soderbergh and the cast make them seem fresh and exciting again. For a change, style and substance work together, not against each other. It was like when I saw DePalma's "Scarface" or the series "Miami Vice" for the first time.
The only time my credulity was challenged was when drug czar Douglas went looking for his addict daughter in the worst-and apparently all-black-part of Cincinnati, kicking down doors and threatening an armed dealer himself. The guy's supposed to be a popular, hard-nosed, law-and-order judge. Surely he could've found some sympathetic cops to handle the rough stuff for him. This, for me, was the only scene where the movie took a turn for the stupid. And, to the film's credit, this stupid behavior almost gets Douglas killed.
Soderbergh got my attention three years ago with "Out of Sight" and knocked me out again last year with "Erin Brockovich". He fully deserves all the nominations and awards he's been getting lately. >