Traffic (2000).

Review #1526: Traffic.

Cast: 
Michael Douglas (Robert Wakefield), Benicio del Toro (Javier Rodriguez), Don Cheadle (Montel Gordon), Catherine Zeta-Jones (Helena Ayala), Dennis Quaid (Arnie Metzger), Erika Christensen (Caroline Wakefield), Luis Guzmán (Ray Castro), Jacob Vargas (Manolo Sanchez), Tomas Milian (General Arturo Salazar), Topher Grace (Seth Abrahams), Miguel Ferrer (Eduardo Ruiz), Amy Irving (Barbara Wakefield), Steven Bauer (Carlos Ayala), D. W. Moffett (Jeff Sheridan), James Brolin (General Ralph Landry), and Albert Finney (White House Chief of Staff) Directed by Steven Soderbergh (#984 - Logan Lucky)

Review: 
"Well, I think a part of you has to be scared, it keeps you alert; otherwise you become complacent. So absolutely, I'm purposefully going after things and doing things that I'm not sure if it's going to come off or not."

There's a difference between one doing films for a living and one making cinema, particularly when it comes to a process-driven director like Steven Soderbergh. He had an interest in film as a teenager that led to him doing his own shorts with a Super 8 and 16 mm camera. He moved to Hollywood by the 1980s and moved his way gradually through roles such as game show composing to concert video directing. His first directing responsibility was the 1985 concert film 9012Live, which featured the band Yes. An idea for a film combined with a cross-country trip led to the development of his first feature in Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), a film regarded as an independent classic. Soderbergh (who once described himself as a synthesist) has done a mix of independent and mainstream films over the years, with noted works including Out of Sight (1998), Erin Brockovich (2000), and Ocean's Eleven (2001) that represent a versatile director of heist and psychological movies.

The basis for this film was Soderbergh wanted to make a film about the drug trade without having it be about addicts. With the rights to a property that seemed like what he wanted, producer Laura Bickford presented him with the rights to Traffik, a six-part 1989 miniseries written by Simon Moore that dealt with the illegal trade that wove a story between suppliers, growers, and customers from Pakistan to Germany to England, respectively). Looking for scripts led to one by Steve Gaghan that was about high school students and their problem with drugs and gangs that had Edward Zwick involved as producer, but the writer got him to try and do a film together with both Soderbergh and Zwick. After spending time consulting on the outline and doing films on the side, a script was finished that would have over a hundred speaking parts and split storylines to be shot in two months. The film was released by USA Films after 20th Century Fox went through wanting Harrison Ford for the lead, getting him to sign on, and dropping out even after script changes (which Douglas liked enough to take on the role after declining it initially). Soderbergh (who also shot the film himself) wanted a distinct vision for each of the three stories in order, such as having that involved different filters and contrast, such as no filter for a blue tinted Wakefield story or overexposed film with diffusion filter for Ayala's story or tobacco filter in Rodriguez's story.

It is interesting to view the film through its numerous perspectives that says what it wants about the approach to various cultures and the way that vices inhibit their little worlds in big and small ways of cruciality that shows shades of gray in every place with no real clear answer, with a war that isn't what it looks like on television. It has a cohesive edge in most areas that will inspire curiosity alongside certain emotions that make it stick with a viewer now as it did back in 2000. It doesn't compromise itself with trying to make a definitive statement or judgement on any of the three linked stories but instead lets the viewer make their own impressions on how vices (whatever kind of substance they are) can affect us or others around us without having easy solutions whatever border you live in. Obviously there isn't just one key star in the film, but the one that seems the most prominent to focus as first is Douglas, then followed by del Toro, Cheadle, and Zeta-Jones, although this isn't to diminish the effect others have in support. Douglas proves fairly captivating, one who runs with a hard-lined naivety that makes for a high-strung and capable performance that we can at least see some of which in others or ourselves in what we believe seems right. The speech at the end for example makes a point in what it doesn't say just as much as what actually is said about a fight against substances and ourselves, which Douglas handles neatly. When it comes to del Toro (a Puerto Rico native that shifted his focus from studying business to drama at the age of 20), he sticks out just as well in his distinct storyline (told to us primarily in Spanish with subtitles, which is what Soderbergh desired) in jaded honesty that we follow with great interest because of his well-timed instincts for what seems to be necessary to eke out a living within authority and corruption. This works out best in a little scene involving tourists looking for their car and del Toro telling them about calling a man to help them find the car (after stating the police won't find their car) - it is a fascinating moment that would've probably just been a one-shot blip with a less intuitive actor (incidentally he would later star in another drug war related film with Sicario, which also rules). Cheadle does just as well in reliable nature with a sort of cat-and-mouse game involving procedure and coercion, which he does with careful tension. This reflects just as well on Zeta-Jones in her evolution of principles and moments shared with a sneaky (and fairly effective) Quaid.

There are other aspects that do well, such as Christensen in driving the angle of shocking addiction without seeming like an after-school special act, but it ultimately is the balance of its three storylines in look and tension that makes it a mostly well-done film for its era. It will hold the attention for most of its intentions in 147 minutes that rewards patience through a mostly intact plot and fair camerawork and editing. It accomplishes most of what it wants to speak to us by knocking us over in its statements said and unsaid that excels in uncompromising uncomfortability that speaks truth to hypocrisy now more than ever.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.