Taking on the subject of drugs in America is a very daunting challenge, which Traffic does exceedingly well.  (We Yankees should be seeing the UK original, Traffik, soon.)  The message here is that our government's war against drugs is really an excuse to not deal with the social problems involved.  Business is far more powerful than government, and now that government is really just a PR branch of big business, it's easy to see the drug cartels as less-inhibited, wild-cat businessmen.

Traffic is a socially-conscious liberal 'issue' movie, the kind conservatives decry as slanted and biased.  Of course that's true, and Traffic is no less calculated than Philadelphia or even Guess Who's Coming to Dinner in its desire to sway the opinion of its viewers.  The trick is to not be condescending: the common denominator of all three movies is that very intelligent liberal filmmakers have tried to make the movie they think the public is ready to see.  The message wants to be, 'Here's enlightenment with your entertainment.'

There's tough talk in Traffic, and an honest appraisal of the enormity of a foe that can outspend the US government, and even outfight it.  Corruption in Mexico is very clearly delineated, but the filmmakers have decided to take the approach that on the US side of things, there is only well-meaning naiveté.  Telling America that it needs to wise up and realize that drugs are all around them is the task of Traffic.  Going further and saying that the War on Drugs industry itself might be suspect, is a pill America still won't swallow, even after the 'isolated case' of ContraGate.  The economic Drug Underworld shares with legitimate business the desire to hide and launder money, and the need to market to its customer base with the least possible government interference.

Everyone knows people who have become victims to drugs, often in our own families, and this film wisely stays on a personal level.  If Judge Wakefield came out and admitted his daughter were an addict, his ability to function in Washington would be as ruined as are Helena Ayala's prospects of tearing duck with the girls at the country club, after she's tainted as the wife of a druglord.  Drugs 'aren't there', and people involved with them 'aren't there'.  If the movie is refreshing, it's because it's bluntly honest in showing affluent kids turning on, drug cops knowing full well they're running up sand hills ('some day I wanna make big arrests, you know, white people'), and an entire planeload of bureaucrats without a single idea to offer on how to do their jobs.  It's critical that the prevention-education people aren't on the plane, or there definitely wouldn't be silence!  Giving the smart-ass private-school dealer the big speech relating Drugs to Class and Economic reality is the strongest and most honest scene of all.

Multi-plot, multi-character sagas are tough to make work in these days where even giant blockbuster epics (like Gladiator, one tenth the movie this is) seem to have only a handful of speaking parts.  Soderbergh helps keep his stories straight by visually stylizing the three main subplots, with a yellowish cast for Mexico and a blue one for some of the Michael Douglas scenes.  The script never bogs down in bald exposition, although quite a few characters harangue others with their opinions.  Miguel Ferrer's defeated smuggler does this exceptionally well.

Mexico is handled fairly, even if it's too easy for those so inclined to judge the whole country on the basis of what they see here.  Making Javier so savvy and controlled will do a lot for the image of Mexican males - note that we don't see him relating to a girlfriend or a wife, where he might be revealed as thuggishly macho: instead, we see him consoling Manolo's despondent wife, as a proper caballero.  Kingpin Ayalya comes off as a less threatening version of the demonized character played by Robert Davi in Licence to Kill; the most personally refreshing scenes in the movie for this viewer were the ones showing the affluent, gracious Ayalas turning into vicious killers the moment their lifestyle is endangered.  That's the true face of upscale living in Savant's book.

Although the complicated plot is made amazingly clear, there are a few confusing situations, such as figuring out exactly who is trying to kill who and why in the double-assassination scene.  And many people don't follow Catherine Zeta-Jones' conversion from shocked housewife, to replacement Drug Czar.  Dialog hinting at the fact that her husband found her as a prostitute doesn't help many viewers; how does that reconcile with the charming, refined woman we first meet?  The answer is that too many of us still believe in cultural fairy tales, like the kind that draw a line between the two types of women.

Traffic is too smart to make speeches.  The 1956 movie The Harder they Fall ends with Humphrey Bogary quitting to make a big anti-boxing statement.  He starts typing his exposé as 'the end' fades up.  If Traffic were treated similarly, Michael Douglas would quit in front of the microphones, and tell everyone off - the President, the military, all of us.  Douglas' father Kirk essentially does just this in Paths of Glory.  That's the grandstanding cliché that usually prevails when filmmakers want to garner awards for being 'courageous', and it's nice that this movie avoids it.

I was taught that Sinclair Lewis' The Octopus truly influenced public opinion against robber barons and helped Theodore Roosevelt with his reforms.  How you value Traffic may depend on whether you measure its success as entertainment, or influence.  Sometimes these socially conscious films have the knack of showing the whole culture what it already knew, but didn't collectively know it knew.  If the result is just more hopelessness and apathy, then perhaps it's too late for this kind of film.  I think Traffic is more constructive than that.  Without ever saying so in words, it makes us believe that our War on Drugs is just a war on our own children for political publicity.  That's a very healthy idea.

USA Home Entertainment's DVD of Traffic recreates the theatrical experience well, retaining the strange color-toned sequences, which now look as though they might have been shot on Digital Video.  Although not a showcase for audio or visual effects, the polished presentation focuses our attention on the drama, which is appropriate.  The disc offers no Soderbergh commentary, which is interesting because I just got through listening to him on the Catch-22 disc.  A stunning thriller, a gripping drama, and a subversive think-piece, Traffic is one of the first great movies of the new century.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Traffic rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: Trailers, TV spots, featurette, photo gallery
Packaging: Amaray case
Reviewed: May 31, 2001