Traffic
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Movie Reviews of Traffic
Movie Review: Traffic-Fantastic!
Summary: 5 Stars
Traffic:Starring Michael Douglas and Cathrine Zeta-Jones,
This is a film is about drugs, family and law. It all comes together magnificantly. One of my favorite movies of all time. Revealing the truth about drugs!
Movie Review: Well Written, Well Argued...
Summary: 5 Stars
Well written, directed, and acted, Traffic makes the Case that we need to attack the demand side of the drug trade if we are going to win the war on drugs, b/c our current supply-side approach is futile.Movie Review: Remarkable
Summary: 5 Stars
Thought provoking, suspenseful, illuminating and candid. Actors love working for Steven Soderbergh and it shows. Each role was well developed and fully realized on screen. This movie is powerful!Movie Review: A Movie As Important As It Is Excellent
Summary: 4 Stars
While people are currently complaining that we are fighting a foreign war that we have no way of winning, there is in fact a homeland war that is looking just as grim that gets far less media attention. That war is the war on drugs, a war that is examined in all different angles in Steven Soderbergh's exceptionally brilliant "Traffic." "Traffic" covers drugs from beginning to end. While "Crash" and "Babel" may have ultimately brought the craft of hyperlink storytelling to popularity, it was "Traffic" that originally perfected the art of telling a single narrative through different perspectives. We get to see the drugs shipped from Mexico to America, we get to see the drug dealers explain their side of the story, we get to see the congressmen who are attempting to fight drugs, and we finally get to see teenagers who use the drugs themselves.
It's mind boggling to see how much of an impact drugs really have on our culture and on the lives of our fellow man. Soderbergh filmed "Traffic" on a digital camera of things, which gives the movie the look of a home video. The color tones also differ from character to character, demonstrating the mood they're currently in. For example, a cop in Mexico is surrounded in a glow of orange, giving the viewer a feeling of what viewing Mexico for the first time is like. Then we look through the eyes of a teenage girl who is taking drugs, and the world looks hazy and blue, except for light which seems to be brighter then it should be. It's a great stylistic choice, one that benefits the film and makes it look as fresh and inventive today as it did seven years ago. But my goodness, I must be out of my mind.
I haven't even discussed the storyline with you yet, and here I am jumping into the art of the film making. I think this is the first (as my brother calls them) "talking drama" film I actually did this on. And now that I've dipped in with a small analyst of the film making, I want to point out that the acting is excellent. Michael Douglas as Congressman Robert Wakefield particularly stands out as the congressman who goes to congress meetings pitching his plans to enforce the war on drugs, only to run into a conflict when he discovers his daughter Caroline (Erika Christensen) is a drug addict herself. Benicio del Toro may have walked away with the Oscar for his portrayal of the conflicted Mexican cop Javier Rodriguez, but in my eyes Michael Douglas steals this movie right out from all the other actors.
Though I must admit, Don Cheadle comes dangerously close as Montel Gordon, a man who has captured a key witness who's testimony could send a major drug lord to jail for life. His witness singles out the husband of Helena Ayala (Catherine Zeta-Jones), who is shocked to discover this secret life her husband has been living (which has supplied the income she never really questioned before), but feels compelled to get involved in the business after her son is threatened by another drug lord. All of these stories could be their own movie, yet "Traffic" roles them all into one very effectively. These storylines contribute to each other so beautifully, that it's like watching a well-made documentary (which, ironically, is also what the film looks like thanks to Soderbergh's digital camera technique).
"Traffic" caused considerable amount of controversy when it was nominated for five Academy Awards. Of the five "Traffic" took home four, including Oscars for Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor (I guess I should also mention it won for Best Editing, seeing as how sub-par editing could have easily killed this film). The only Oscar it did not win was Best Picture, which went to Ridley Scott's "Gladiator." Yes, I know people tend to accuse the Academy Awards for taking themselves too seriously, but at least this year the Academy members shut their brains off and gave the Best Picture award to one of those brainless action movies average movie goers constantly (and ignorantly) claim are better then Oscar winning films like "Casablanca" and "Titanic."
Even if you LIKED "Gladiator" there's no denying that "Gladiators" film quality is certainly not on the same level as "Traffics" is, and it's certainly not as memorable. Yeah, I know the two films are different, and thus should be exempt from comparison, but seeing as how both films are actually two and a half hours long, I find it interesting when people compliment "Traffic" for feeling "half as long" as it's advertised, where with "Gladiator" I've never heard people comment on the film feeling short then it really is. People who do watch "Traffic" compliment the unique style of filming in the movie, but with "Gladiator" they only seem interested that the movie looked cool. "Traffic" is a classic film that is just as relevant today as it was seven years ago. It's still daring today, it's still important today, and it's still just as fascinating today. Dare I say it, "Traffic" losing Best Picture was the biggest snub since the snubbing of "Raging Bull."
Rating: **** and a half stars
Movie Review: An honest, artful take on the drug war
Summary: 4 Stars
"The war on drugs has many enemies. Sometimes the enemy is your own family. And I don't know how you wage war against your family." - Dialogue from "Traffic" Which is why the war on drugs, like the war on violence or the war on obesity or any other social war, will be difficult, if not impossible, to win. More than statistics and money, the war on drugs asks for an assault on desires of human consumption, which cannot be combated with any policy or criminal punishment.
The most powerful element of Steven Soderbergh's "Traffic," quite possibly the best American movie in 2000, is how it lays bare the nuances of human nature that simply have no reasonable explanation. What leads good to bad? "Traffic" has no hard answers, but it does show a wide canvas of protagonists either connected to drugs in some way (whether it be enforcement, sales, or use) or lost in the pursuit of some material or chemical high. If it isn't drugs, it's money or a lifestyle one can't give up. Faced with hardship all her life, the beautiful, pregnant wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones) of a drug lord refuses to return to it, using her young son's golf putter as a sign of what she has to lose. When her husband is arrested, and faced with forfeiting his entire fortune, the wife is again faced with poverty. Just watch what she does to prevent it.
In another story, an Ohio judge (Michael Douglas) accepts a job as the nation's drug czar, and is immediately faced with his own domestic crisis; his honor student daughter, Caroline (Erika Christensen) has fallen into drug addiction with free base cocaine. While the most interesting, best-acted segment involves a corrupt Mexican cop (Benicio Del Toro) trying to walk the fine line between death and profit, all while battling his conscience, the key, absorbing scenes occur with the father and daughter in Ohio. The screenplay, written by Stephen Gagham, is adapted from a British series by the same name, draws Caroline as a character who falls hard for drugs, in the way that few people, I suspect, do.
She cries, literally, tears of joy, at the thought of getting high. She subjects herself to whatever demand it makes of her, sexually or financially. She represents the ecstasy end of the spectrum, and rarely has it been captured so well, the abject happiness of crack. The lingering images of the film mostly involve her character, and her boyfriend Seth (Topher Grace), who is just well-versed enough to justify the use of drugs as an escape from convention.
(...)
This is a statement you've heard, no doubt, in any after-school special. Really, there is nothing original in "Traffic." It's been onscreen before, especially in the 1980s, when anti-drug films were the standard fare. What struck me in watching the movie is how familiar all this material is (the key drug witness wanting immunity, the corrupt cops, the daddy's little girl gone astray) and yet how the craftsmanship of Soderbergh's direction and camerawork tie it together into a moving, ambitious work.
Del Toro, as the cop, uses a quiet smolder to show his growing frustration with the Mexican status quo regarding drug cartels. Douglas, in a rather subdued performance, is troubled from nearly the opening frame; first, as he discovers how little can be done to fight drugs, and then, with his daughter, just why that is. A wide supporting cast, including Don Cheadle, Lusi Guzman and a nearly unrecognizable Benjamin Bratt, flesh out their small parts well.
"Traffic's" uncommon strength lies in its conflict of conventional morality vs. the baby boomer experience. There is a scene where Douglas asks his wife (Amy Irving) how long she's known about her daughter's drug use. The wife has kept her daughter's secret for six months, for no better reason than in college, she used drugs, came out all right, and look, now she's a millionaire. And so what harm could a little experimentation do? And how could she offer herself up as a hypocrite to her own daughter?
Another question is asked: What separates our fates? The user from the addict? The alive cop at the baseball game vs. the dead one in the desert, when they were both trying to do the same thing? "Traffic" plays these questions out; we aren't surprised by the ambiguity of the results, and yet the journey of this film is as absorbing and dramatic as any in recent years.