Overrated (Traffic (DVD))

Member Name: john316

Product:	Traffic (DVD)
Date:	05/03/02 (28 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good acting performances

Disadvantages: Too slow, Preaches

Traffic is a pretty good, though somewhat overrated film. It portrays the ridiculous War on Drugs that US (and occasionally other) politicians run in a grab for cheap votes. The movie is quite ambitious in that it tries to show three different angles to the story. There's the side of the Mexican cop played by Benicio Del Toro who has to fight against corruption as well as drug smuggling. Then there's the two US cops played by Don Cheadle and the sublime Luis Guzman, who go after importers on the other side of the border in San Diego. Finally there's Michael Douglas as the newly appointed head of the DEA.

The three stories are filmed in distinctly different colour schemes to make an easy distinction that becomes more distracting than anything else. Thus, the head of the DEA story is drenched in blue tones and the Mexican shots are all covered in yellow but the whole thing becomes gimmicky very quickly and the film would have been better without it. It is as though Steve Soderbergh didn't think audiences would appreciate that it was 3 stories in one

What makes the film good is that it generally strays from the obvious path and instead shows that there are no easy solutions. As long as there's a profit in it people will always push drugs and no amount of manpower or moralistic high ground is going to change that.

Where it loses it somewhat is when it tries to hammer home some points with a few cheap shots. There's the head of the DEA who has a bit of a drinking problem himself for one. Even worse is his daughter who becomes a junkie in a badly executed "we try to fight a global war while we can't even control what's going on at home" point. This is really underdeveloped and badly done. Erika Christensen who plays Michael Douglas's daughter goes from the upper class nice girl who occasionally does dope on campus to a drug addict who runs away and prostitutes herself for dope within a couple of days
. This is a bad lapse into the "one sniff and you're hooked for life" cliche that is behind a lot of the War on Drugs policy.

Another lapse of taste is the ending which I won't give away here, other than to say that it's an obvious test audience ending. I'm certain that after an initial test screening a couple of hicks requested a more upbeat ending that really spoils an otherwise good film now.

Unlike a lot of Hollywood movies, particularly ones dealing with drugs and pushers the characters are quite well developed and Steven Soderbergh avoids painting them in simple black and white. His direction is quite good apart from the above mentioned points. There are a lot of different characters and plots in this movie, probably too many for you too care about. The film is just too slow for my liking and drags on, espically in the middle of the film

Summary: