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In a Terrorism Era
It's not just a drug bust anymore
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
What a difference a terrorist attack
makes.
Traffic," the three-part
mini-series that starts tonight on the USA Network, is the third drug-trade
thriller by that name. As gripping as Steven Soderbergh's 2000 movie or the
1989 British mini-series "Traffik," this version is a look at the war on
drugs through the prism of Sept. 11. Heroin is the least of it; there are
more
imminent threats to American society, including Al Qaeda terrorists who use
drug routes to smuggle weapons into Seattle.
The mini-series is not a remake in the
same way there are multiple renditions of "The Prisoner of Zenda" or "A Star
Is Born." But like remakes, each "Traffic" reflects the mores of its period
and culture, and ours is evidently not a time for ambivalence or fatalism.
The USA "Traffic" follows the template laid out by the
British mini-series, which Mr. Soderbergh borrowed for his movie — four
interconnected, cross-cutting story lines — to make an entirely
different point. Mr. Soderbergh's jittery, operatic movie, centered
on the United States and Mexico, was very distinct in tone and
sensibility from the understated British mini-series set in Pakistan,
Germany and Britain, but both of those works were infused with
despair and cynicism.
This "Traffic" gives a bleak, mesmerizing portrait of an insidious,
intractable criminal underworld, but there is not the same sense of
futility. American law enforcement may be fighting a losing battle
against traffickers, but a few tough men can make a difference.
The series has two
such heros: Mike McKay (Elias Koteas), a United
States Drug Enforcement Administration field agent who infiltrates
opium smuggling clans in Afghanistan, and Adam Kadyrov (Cliff
Curtis), a cabdriver and Chechen immigrant in Seattle whose wife and
child drown with dozens of other illegal immigrants when a freighter
sinks. Both men operate outside the law, but neither seems confused
about right and wrong.
The story opens with Mike talking by cellphone to his wife, Carole
(Mary McCormack), back home in Seattle about a routine day that
included a shootout with Afghan smugglers. (Different times,
different Fazals: in the British mini-series, Fazal was a Pakistani
opium grower who cannot earn a living any other way; when the Afghan
Fazal makes the same excuse to his American captor, Mike scoffs and
tells him he is not a farmer, he is a "middleman.")
Mr. Koteas plays
Mike with the same weary toughness that Robert De
Niro's ex-C.I.A. agent showed in the movie "Ronin," so when he
suddenly shakes loose from his partner, Brent (Martin Donovan), to go
AWOL with a group of Afghan drug smugglers, viewers are safe in
assuming there is more to his story. His adventures galloping on
horseback across Afghan plains, AK47's and Claymore mines crammed in
his saddlebags, are cross cut with the more mundane dangers faced by
his wife and lonely 15-year-old son, Tyler (Justin Chatwin), who do
not understand why they are under surveillance by the D.E.A. in
Seattle.
Shadowy forces of corruption also surface along the coastline of
Seattle, where fishermen scoop up a dead body in their net, then
hurriedly throw it back. Other corpses start to float to port,
illegal immigrants killed when the freighter that was smuggling them
into the United States sank.
When Adam realizes that his wife and child died in that accident, he
goes on an obsessive search for an explanation of why it sank. His
ferocious desire to know such a dangerous secret contrasts sharply
with the willful blindness of Ben (Balthazar Getty), a young M.B.A.
who inherits his father's failing garment import business and ends up
working as a money launderer for the local Chinese crime boss, Ronny
Cho (Nelson Lee).
Seattle is not known for its teeming Chechen neighborhoods, so it
safe to assume that the screenwriters wanted a Muslim hero to balance
the otherwise rather sinister array of Afghan murderers and thieves.
But a Chechen background makes sense to explain Adam's tenacity;
there is nothing like decades of Soviet rule and invasion by Russian
troops to sharpen one's sense of vengeance and mistrust.
Middlemen are the most vividly drawn villains of the series, starting
with Ronny Cho, the slick, flinty import-export boss, down to the
Pakistani storekeepers and corrupt ship captains who keep the ports
open to illegal trade. Previous versions looked higher up the social
ladder: Mr. Soderbergh's film dwelled on the collaboration of the
ruling classes: rich private school kids using cocaine (including the
drug czar's own teenage daughter), a drug lord's trophy wife
determined to keep her husband's fortune intact, a Mexican general
who is on the take.
In this "Traffic" there is almost no sign of the high and mighty.
There is one glimpse of the rich: Adam's sister-in-law works as a
maid for a wealthy American family. Seeking help, he goes to their
stunning modern glass house — all open spaces — and they shut him
out, not unmoved by his story, but too scared to get involved. Theirs
is a sin of omission, not collaboration.
That, too, is a post-Sept. 11 sensibility. Safe times embolden
paranoia, the luxury of linking corruption and conspiracy all the way
to the top. At more dangerous moments, there is less inclination to
imagine the worst. "Traffic," seeks merely to show how bad things can
get.
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