Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

"Traffic" is an overlong, unnecessarily complicated movie that thinks it has something new to say about the ‘war on drugs’, but doesn’t. Those who criticize the Nancy Reagan “Just say no” mantra in favour of movies like this -- that ask a lot of stylish questions but provide nary an answer -- are just kidding themselves into complacency.

Ostensibly an attack on the same story from four different viewpoints, I’d say only half of the action was relevant and necessary.

The Mexico scenes, roughly 90% in Spanish, survive mainly on the talents of its hulking lead, Benicio Del Toro. He never does anything flashy or obvious, but ably shows his character’s dangerous dilemma. And his charisma is just enough to save the day, especially when surrounded by a crowd of two-dimensional villains.

The scenes featuring DEA agents Don Cheadle and Luis Guzman are entertaining and surprisingly funny. But they really have no place in this movie. These two fine actors have wonderful chemistry together, but it feels like they have been spliced in from a low budget but finely written buddy movie. I’m not against a little comic relief in the midst of a tense drama, but it just never seemed appropriate here. Their clowning undermines the drama (In interviews, director Steven Soderbergh floated the idea of shooting a prequel featuring these two; a better idea might have been scrapping "Traffic" altogether, and focusing on that instead, the Don and Luis show being a movie I'd much rather see).

The Catherine Zeta-Jones scenes are so mishandled that I don’t know where to start. First, the buzz on her character was that she quickly goes from being a sheltered innocent to a Machiavellian drug lord, because her situation demands it. Thus bringing up a series of ethical questions and moral dilemmas. I bought the sheltered innocent part, but the rest was just laughable. A gradual transformation might’ve worked, but she falls so easily into the role vacated by her jailed husband that you have to question how much she really knew all along (which might have been the point; if so, why didn't Soderbergh offer any clues beforehand? That's just shoddy storytelling, if you ask me). And on top of that, her mothering instincts seem to leave her completely. After her son is threatened, the boy never again appears in the film! Would a competent mother ever let him leave her side after that? It is an odd choice, amplified by the fact that Jones lobbied hard to play the role while pregnant. Wouldn't that very fact have made her question her scenes a bit more, make her sensitive to her character's issues? Alas, it doesn't. And don’t get me started on the ineptness of Dennis Quaid’s character, not to mention his acting.

Finally, we have the Michael Douglas scenes. I knew this story would be awful the minute I saw Douglas' ridiculous hair. It makes him look like an ignorant moron, and his actions in his new job as Drug Czar don’t dispel that perception one bit. The whole point of his character was to reveal that no matter how sheltered and mundane your life is, the drugs can find even you. So his daughter gets high. A lot. And when she heads down to the bad part of town, well, our hero Mr. Douglas has to go find her (as if it's the job of the Drug Czar to clean up all the drugs by himself!). At one point he transforms into an older and blander version of his fine vigilante character from "Falling Down". I half expected him to get a buzz-cut and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. I’d like to say something about the characters of his daughter and his wife, but both were so insubstantial and cliched that there’s really no point.

I liked Soderbergh's comeback film "Out of Sight", where he ably flipped back and forth through time and story (a technique used less effectively in his next film, "The Limey"). Here, he does pretty much the same thing, only not as extreme. Yet it doesn’t work nearly as well. And just because one character from one of the threads passes on the street a character from another of the threads doesn’t mean that everybody’s life is intertwined. I used to think that the connections linking the characters in "Magnolia" were the epitome of tenuous, but "Traffic" out does even that rambling mess (which leads me to believe that if you liked "Magnolia" -- I didn't -- you'll probably like "Traffic" too). Then there's Soderbergh’s work behind the camera. His work as cinematographer is cheekily credited to 'Peter Andrews'. Maybe Andrews should get together with the Coen Brothers' alter ego, Roderick Jaynes, because he sure doesn't know how to shoot a Soderbergh film. Soderbergh uses extreme colours to denote a change in geography, a technique intended to be artful, subtle, and symbolic. It comes off, rather, as heavy handed and condescending to its audience. We don’t need colour coding to understand that we’ve gone from Mexico to Cincinnati (does he think we can’t read his title cards?).

I realize that mine is the minority opinion on this subject. Not even Soderbergh's inexplicable Best Director Oscar win will sway me. Just understand that when a talented filmmaker like Soderbergh -- and he's proven in fits and spurts that he knows how to make a movie -- fails to fulfill the promise of a subject pregnant with possibilities, I feel we have to call him out on it. Maybe he’ll get it right next time.

Recommended: No

Viewing Format: VHS