Steven Soderbergh has become one of the most reliable filmmakers on the scene, and his output isn’t slowing down. I started to take note with Out of Sight, the 1998 film noir I’ve seen more than a dozen times and still can’t get enough of, and Soderbergh’s directorial work on The Limey and Erin Brockovich was just as strong. It’s with Traffic, though, that Soderbergh’s ambition seems to be growing exponentially. He is a filmmaker who’s ready to tackle the Ensemble Film and the Issue Film at the same time, to toss at us a group of seemingly unrelated characters and show us their role in one of our generation’s undeniable sociopolitical nightmares, the War on Drugs.

I’ve subscribed to Rolling Stone for years and years, and I’ve read those achingly liberal sob stories about, oh, the guy in the wheelchair who is serving 25 years to life because he grew marijuana on his property for medicinal purposes. (Or, in a popular variation, the genteel parent of the afflicted who’s made to serve hard time for similar reasons.) These are the sob-story casualties of the so-called War on Drugs, the people who make the federal government seem the most irrational and inhumane, the people who make this war seem less futile than purely tragic. Traffic is not a movie in that vein. The casual pot smoker in favor of decriminalization or legalization won’t find that kind of quiet solidarity here.

No, Traffic deals with the serious stuff, the Mexican cartels and low-level drug dealers hocking coke, heroin and crack. Among other things.

My favorite plot line has to do with a respected judge (Michael Douglas) being offered the position as drug czar of the United States. Soderbergh films the scenes with Douglas through a cold blue lens, and immediately it helps show his detachment from the “front lines” of the drug scene while also implying his helplessness and desire to remain impartial in administering justice.

There’s a sequence at a c_cktail party (you can't say the word "c_cktail" on Epinions anymore??) toward the beginning that sums up the political side of things perfectly – one by one, drinks in hands, pundits and lobbyists and fellow politicians come up to Douglas and offer their armchair insights. All of which are bogged down with the personal and professional obligations of the people who are delivering them. This is a self-serving era of politics, and no one can quite agree on a policy for drugs, only that the majority of their constituents want them to appear tough on them (i.e. drugs).

In the midst of this dizzying orientation to his new position, Douglas is slowly but surely faced with the evidence that his teenage daughter (Erika Christensen) is fighting on the opposing side. The scenes of Christensen and her friends getting messed up were the only ones that seemed remotely familiar to my age and demographic – while the parents are away, tending to their own issues and, say, vacationing in Barbados, the kids are hanging around their big, empty houses and trying to act like adults. Sitting around, drinking and smoking too much, and trying to pontificate on the nature of existence through bleary eyes. When I think of “drugs,” I think of late nights like these, nights of bonding and conversations that are memorable and ridiculous all at once, but the kids in this movie also play infinitely harder than anyone I associate with. Before reel two is up, Christensen has graduated from pot and the occasional line of coke to freebasing and sucking crack smoke through straws.

Meanwhile, Soderbergh favorites Don Cheadle and Luis Guzman portray a pair of federal agents who seem to realize the futility of the fight but nonetheless get their kicks from tracking down and arresting suspects. The early scene with Cheadle and Guzman trying to bait a dealer (Miguel Ferrer) is one of the film’s best – it begins with intriguing, human dialogue and proceeds with perfectly paced action.

The agents’ main focus, though, is to gather evidence on Ferrer’s boss (Steven Bauer), who also suffers early apprehension, via a stakeout on his clueless wife (Catherine Zeta Jones). She’s lived a life of wealth and social graces this whole time, not knowing her husband’s businesses were all fronts for drug dealerships, and now she’s coming to grips with reality. Not just the reality of her husband’s criminal dealings but that the income has stopped, he owes debts, and the government is free to seize her property. From what might seem like a one-note, whiny-victim role (think Julianne Moore in Magnolia), Zeta Jones injects poise and hints of catastrophe, and the script keeps her character vulnerable yet resourceful.

Then there’s the pair of Mexican cops (the invaluable Benicio Del Toro and Jacob Vargas) who take down a drug dealer at the beginning and are slowly absorbed into the world of an Army general (Tomas Milian) who is hellbent on bringing down one of the local drug cartels. This, from my viewpoint, is the weakest of the subplots – as it wears on, anyway – but it gives Traffic the brutal edge and international perspective it needs. Soderbergh films the Mexico scenes through grainy browns and warm reds, and he wisely has the bilingual actors speak Spanish when the situation calls for it. Which is most of the time.

These plot lines loop and intersect one another from time to time, but never in a forced way. The drugs themselves connect these people, not superficial contrivances that might bring them onto the same set. (My only complaint regards Soderbergh’s device of having characters unknowingly pass each other on the streets – two or three times would have been fine with me, but he shows this kind of thing more like six or seven times, and the eventual reaction is, Come ON.) And there’s just enough going on in this movie, on as many fronts, to make it an epic without diluting its scope. Still, Traffic never fully catches fire as a Best Picture qualifier. Some of its “revelations” have been obvious from the beginning, and other plot points become simplified or just plain unsatisfying.

Ultimately, as Roger Ebert points out, the politics of Traffic are ambiguous. At the movie’s end, like the end of any war, some of the bad guys are apprehended, some of the good guys have become casualties, and most everyone’s immediate problems seem to have been alleviated. But this war isn’t over, not nearly – it will go on as long as American politics groan under their own weight and contradictions, as long as the contraband effect makes drugs enticing and allows dealers to make easy, guaranteed money. People will end up dead or imprisoned, while others will prosper as long as they can elude capture. And these characters themselves will continue to be affected, for better and worse.

It may be one of the vital credos of the twelve-step rehab programs, but it also applies in the world of this movie – we can only take things one day at a time.


Recommended:
Yes

Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age