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Drug Running
Elias Koteas is renegade cop
in "Traffic"
By LINDA
STASI, N.Y. Post
January 26, 2004 -- 'TRAFFIC,"
the much acclaimed British TV series, which became a much acclaimed (but
incredibly dopey) movie, is now a much-acclaimed American miniseries.
USA Network has re-jiggered the story of DEA agents (or in the case
of Michael Douglas, the DEA head fed, of course) and how drugs get from
there (wherever there is) to here.
Happily, this "Traffic" is a lot more realistic than the movie, in which
Douglas's daughter went from experimenting with pot to becoming a crack
house 'ho in 14 seconds flat.
USA's "Traffic" revolves around the world of all illegal trafficking - and
how the bad guys deal not only in drugs, but viruses, weapons and even
humans.
The way it's played out here (three, two-hour epsiodes) revolves around
three characters whose lives are inadvertently and intractably tied
together.
There's Mike McKay (Elias Koteas), a renegade DEA agent, working in
Afghanistan; Ben Edmonds (Balthazar Getty), a Seattle MBA whose big-shot
real estate deals all went south; and Adam Kadyrov (Cliff Curtis), a
Seattle cab driver.
It's the way their lives intertwine that not only makes the miniseries
riveting (and you better be riveted, because if you look away for 10
seconds, you'll be lost), but different from what you'd expect.
Mike, off in Afghanistan, connects with a serious bad guy, Fazal (Ritchie
Coster). Mike promises to lead him to where the government-confiscated
heroin (seized from the Taliban) is stored. In exchange, they split the
profits once it's "trafficked" out of the country and
sold.
Meantime, Adam the cab driver finds out that his wife and daughter were
killed (they were being illegally smuggled into the country) when their
shakey ship sinks off the U.S. coast.
Into the mix is Ben, whose father, a Seattle garmento, has recently died.
When Ben tries to clean up his father's debts, he discovers that Daddy was
cooperating with the bad guys - and using his containers on ships to bring
in everything from humans to weapons to
viruses.
Daddy's deal with Ronny Cho (Nelson Lee), a Chinese-American bad guy with
connections all over the world, was a "don't ask/don't tell/just pay me"
business. Ben wants in, too.
Meantime, when DEA agent Mike gets caught in the act in the badlands of
Afghanistan, (has he really turned?), he tries to give up the info about
how all of this trafficking (humans, viruses, heroin) is all tied
together, but the US forces don't buy it.
His family back home - his wife, Carole (Mary McCormack), and son, Tyler
(Justin Chatwin) - is suffering the after-effects.
Seduced by the hot teen next door (Eden Roundtree), Adam becomes
involved, ironically, in Seattle's seamy drug culture.
I told you - look away and you're lost.
This could have turned into a puffy, dopey,
lets-explain-every-single-plot-twist script, but it didn't. They assume
viewers aren't too simple-minded to follow the action, not to mention the
plot.
All the principals - particularly Chatwin, Lee, Koteas and Curtis -are
fantastic. Best of all, the accents sound real for once.
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