Film review: Traffic

A heady trip into the drug underworld

Based on the British mini-series Traffik, which tracked down the route taken by drug traffickers from Pakistan through Europe to England, Director Steven Soderbergh has now come up with an American version, Traffic, about the drug trade from Mexico to the US.

It has won four Oscar awards: Best Director for Soderbergh, Best Supporting Actor for Benicio del Toro (although he actually plays a lead role), Best Adapted Screenplay for Stephen Gaghan, and Best Editing. We feel that Traffic is even more deserving to win the Best Picture award, not the overrated Gladiator.

The complex scope of the narcotic problem is shown through the intersecting stories of different people caught in the web of international drug trafficking. We meet various characters along the drug route, from the packager to the end user, as well as those involved in the judicial system and the police force, and, how this definitely affects the various levels and entire fabric of society.

On the side of the Mexicans, we meet a border cop in Tijuana, Javier Rodriguez (Benicio), basically a good lawman who is trying to do his own part in the war on drugs. But he is up against evil and corrupt military top brass, like the scheming General Salazar (Tomas Milian), who was even appointed as Mexico’s own drug czar. Javier tries his best to maintain his integrity, but his buddy cop, Manolo (Jacob Vargas), is willing to sell out and this causes him his life.

In the US, we meet a dedicated Ohio Supreme Court justice who gets appointed in Washington DC as drug czar. Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas). He is doing everything to wage a personal war against drugs, without knowing that his own 16-year-old daughter, Caroline (Erika Christensen), is herself getting severely hooked on crack and heroin. She is an honor student who gets straight A, but is badly influenced by her classmate and boyfriend, Seth (Topher Grace of That 70s Show).

He and his wife, Barbara (Amy Irving), put her in rehab, but she steals from them, runs away and ends up a prostitute. The acknowledgment of her addiction forces Wakefield to tragically confront, on a personal level, the very problem he is supposed to be fiercely fighting on a national level.

Another crucial story concerns a rich San Diego housewife, Elena Ayala (Catherine Zeta Jones, who’s pregnant in real life when she shot the film) who gets the shock of her life, when her husband, Carlos (Steven Bauer), is arrested for some crime she is not at all aware of.

When she finds out from their family friend, Arnie (Dennis Quaid), that Carlos is a drug pusher, she has no second thoughts in taking over his illegal business. Having led a pampered life she wouldn’t want to give up, she becomes as ruthless as her husband in hiring a notorious murderer, Francisco Flores (Clifton Collins), for the assassination of the court’s sole witness against her husband.

The film also focuses on the heroic efforts of two hardhitting FBI operatives Montel Gordon (Don Cheadle) and Ray Castro (Luis Guzman) who will risk their own lives to apprehend drug dealers in Southern California. We first see them as they bust a drug lord, Eduardo Ruiz (Miguel Ferrer), who they later convinced to be a state witness against Carlos Ayala.

The style of Soderbergh (who was also nominated as Best Director for Erin Brockovich, for which Julia Roberts won as Best Actress) in unfolding his narrative is to transfer the action from one location to another, from Tijuana to Mexico City to Ohio to California to Washington DC. This gives us a very realistic picture of the problems faced by law enforcers and the personal stories of the various characters we encounter throughout the film.

The impression we get is that if a rich and powerful country like the US is waging a losing battle against drugs, what more in the case of a poor undeveloped country like ours, where politicians, judges and law enforcers are so easy to corrupt? We shudder to think that we will be the Colombia (a country ruled by drug cartels) of Southeast Asia, what with talks of narco-politics now being touted by some of our local officials.

Intelligently told, Traffic has excellent production values. Take note that the cinematography for the US scenes is different from that of the Mexican scenes which has a more gritty texture. The camera work is terrific. Soderbergh himself is said to be the cinematographer, under a pseudonym. He uses a hand-held camera in various sequences to give a feel of reality being captured, just like in a documentary.

The entire cast delivers first-rate ensemble acting. Del Toro’s lines are mostly in Spanish, with English subtitles. Even if he is a Puerto Rican who grew up in the US, he employs a dialogue coach to make sure he gets the Mexican accent right. He deserves his award as the morally conflicted Tijuana cop.

Douglas is equally impressive as the beleaguered father who gives up his job to concentrate on his daughter. His real-life wife, Zeta Jones (but they have no scenes together), is equally competent as the innocent housewife turned heartless drug trafficker and should have at least been nominated.

The other actors who also deserve commendation for doing a fine job in their respective cameo roles include Benjamin Bratt as a Mexican drug lord, Salma Hayek as the mistress of a general, Albert Finney as a top US official and James Brolin as a general.

This film has long been available on pirated VCD but don’t be content to watch it there since so much is lost in the "pirating" process. On VCD, you won’t even get to read the subtitles. The fine cinematography alone (using various kinds of tints) already deserves to be seen on the big wide screen.