"That's a nice-a donut."

Wednesday, April 12, 2006


Traffic (2000)

Forget the recent little brouhaha over Crash winning the Oscar for Best Picture over Brokeback Mountain. Or other noteworthy surprises such as Shakespeare in Love topping Saving Private Ryan or Ordinary People over Raging Bull. For my money, one of the biggest jokes in the Academy's history was awarding the top prize in 2000 to Gladiator over Steven Soderbergh's masterpiece, Traffic. Actually based on the also-great British mini-series Traffik from the late 1980s, Traffic has the benefit of higher production values and a more pleasing style than its predecessor, and the result is a movie that is a sometimes grim, but very entertaining and multi-layered tale about drugs, the war on drugs, and the effects of each on numerous people.

There are four primary stories in Traffic. One focuses on Mexican police officer Javier Rodriguez Rodriguez (Benicio Del Toro) and his partner Manolo (Jacob Vargas), and their efforts to be good, hard working cops in a corrupt state and to take down the local drug cartels. The second storyline is about a pair of DEA agents (Don Cheadle and Luis Guzman) and their operation to bring down a major San Diego drug supplier. In turn, the third story involves the drug supplier's wife Helen Ayala (Catherine Zeta-Jones), a pregnant upper-society woman who must come to terms with his likely imprisonment. Finally, Bob Wakefield (Michael Douglas) is an Ohio Supreme Court justice who has just been named as Drug Czar. While he tries to navigate the very complex and difficult road ahead in his job, his daughter (Erika Christensen) and her friends have entered a downward spiral and have become addicted to cocaine, in its various forms. The movie weaves in and out seamlessly between the different, but connected, storylines. Pretty much the only group of people not shown are the actual drug makers - the growers and the post-processing folks. That aspect is covered in Traffik, but doesn't hurt this story as there is already so much for us to take in and think about.

All of the pieces intersect in some way, and all of the major characters face changes and must make crucial decisions along the way as well. Javier has serious career choices to make, with both ethics and money rearing their ugly heads; Wakefield obviously has family issues as well as dealing with how it may impact his career; Helena must figure out how the heck her and her kids are to survive with her husband headed to prison and dangerous people after her for money. Some upper brow wink-and-nod moments help to further increase the depth of the story, like how Wakefield likes to drink alcohol (obviously not seeing the risk or comparison to illegal drugs), or how when he gives a speech to associates about "thinking outside the box" on drug war solutions and ideas, the room goes silent. Nobody has any ideas because the "war" is unwinnable.

The story in Traffic is what forces you take notice, but the many talented actors in the ensemble cast deftly help elevate it. Cheadle is fantastic, in a role that is often deadly serious, but his comedic interplay with fellow DEA agent Guzman is almost show-stopping; it's this performance that helped to eventually catapult Cheadle into one of America's finest actors. Douglas is very commanding in a challenging role; it's hard to imagine being in such a high position of power and having your child ironically be doing the exact opposite of what your job hopes to stop, but he nails the drama and complex emotions that were obviously running through Wakefield. Of course, the unforeseen side effect of this is that seemingly every Douglas role from here on forward were powerful, upper class men. Overall, it is a well-oiled ensemble cast in every way.

Though it lost out on the big trophy, it did end up winning several other awards, and deserved every one of them: directing, screenplay adaptation, editing, and Del Toro as supporting actor. It could also have just as easily won for its photography though, which is enhanced by a beautiful use of filters. With dirty, washed-out, tannish/yellowish tones for the Mexican scenes, grayish-blue hues for scenes in government buildings like in DC or a border security building in Texas, and vibrant colors for the other parts such as plush Cincinnati suburbs or garish La Jolla near San Diego. And a very subtle, and vastly underrated, music score is top-notch. Unlike many other interchangeable scores, it is not distracting at all, and usually sits in the background, only building up as the stories advance. The music finally crescendos over "night baseball" in the closing shots.

For much of the movie Traffic only plays lip service to the other side, with regards to the "war on drugs" being a losing cause, but is able to strike a nice balance by the end and show that you can't just stop the supply, but that the demand must be addressed. The end is just what it needed to be: hopeful and optimistic.

The Verdict: A+.

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