Gienette Chavez\’s blog

“If there is a make on drugs, then many of our kind members are the enemy. And I don’t grasp how you wage a war on your own family.”

The Movie:
Previously known as an art house auteur (his first film sex, lies, and videotape being his most successful) and director of the sort-of mainstream George Clooney vehicle Out of Sight (which has a strong fan base but wasn’t much of a box office hit), Steven Soderbergh made a bid for respectability in 2000 with not just one but two Oscar bait prestige projects. The ploy worked out pretty well for him. Both Erin Brockovich and Traffic were blockbuster hits, won a fair share of awards (including a Best Director Academy Award trophy for the latter), and solidified the filmmaker’s standing on the Hollywood A-list.

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Scripted by Stephen Gaghan, Traffic is adapted from the famous British miniseries Traffik and takes a hard look at the illegal drug trade from multiple perspectives. All sides of the issue are explored via a series of intersecting storylines. On the front lines, a Mexican cop (Benicio Del Toro) witnesses the rampant government corruption that facilitates the smuggling of drugs across the U.S. border. In the halls of American power, a politically ambitious judge (Michael Douglas) is picked as the new Drug Tsar and quickly runs into obstacles implementing new policies. In fact, even the judge’s own daughter (Erika Christensen) and her privileged rich kid friends experiment with freebasing and begin the downward spiral of addiction. In the netherworld between these two extremes, a DEA agent (Don Cheadle) in California attempts to take down a drug running ring but finds the effort futile; even if he succeeds all he’s done is clear the way for new competition to move in. Meanwhile, a society wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones) whose husband is indicted on trafficking charges is forced into taking over his smuggling racket to pay their debts and protect her family.

The movie has a huge cast of other recognizable faces (Dennis Quaid, Albert Finney, Luis Guzman, Amy Irving, and Miguel Ferrer among others), but it’s Del Toro who stands out in a star-making turn; he won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor but actually carries a big chunk of the movie and proves he can be an effective leading man. The story has an ambitious reach and a complicated structure. Soderbergh juggles all these elements with masterful control, maintaining a steady tone that emphasizes the tragedy of the situation without overstepping into preachiness, overwrought theatrics, or heavy-handed sermonizing. The movie asks many questions but is frank that it can deliver no answers. It takes no political stance either for or against our government’s policies other than to point out that they clearly aren’t working. The war on drugs is a self-generating, never-ending cycle of corruption, hypocrisy, and hopelessness with seemingly no possible solution.

The irony of the Drug Tsar’s daughter being a junkie is perhaps a little forced, and Soderbergh (working as both director and cinematographer) employs an overtly schematic color design on the film that is somewhat effective but also a bit distracting. Scenes in Mexico are filtered in ugly, hellish yellow tones. Those in the circles of American government are bathed in sterile, cold blues. The middle-ground where these two extremes collide, those scenes in California near the border, have more natural colors. The intent behind the style is obvious but also disappointingly didactic, and not much in keeping with the even-handed tone in which the drama is handled. Even so, Traffic is a compelling, powerful work of socially-conscious filmmaking, and yet another fine achievement in Steven Soderbergh’s eclectic career.

The HD DVD:
Traffic debuts on the HD DVD format courtesy of Universal Studios Home Entertainment.

HD DVD discs are only playable in a compatible HD DVD player. They will not function in a standard DVD player or in a Blu-Ray player. Please note that the star rating scales for video and audio are relative to other High Definition disc content, not to traditional DVD.