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- "Traffic"
(Reviewed December 4, 2000)
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This often fascinating movie by "Out of Sight," "The Limey" and "Erin Brockovich" director Steven Soderbergh starts out a lot better than it ends. Interlocking stories involving Mexican drug cartels, the
trial of a California drug kingpin, and the appointment of a new US drug czar are shot with style and imagination, and offer a lot of promise at the outset. But every one of those three plots deteriorates into
pure melodrama by the time the credits roll, as if the movie ran out of gas halfway through.
You will roll your eyes when Michael Douglas, playing a strait-laced Ohio judge who has been tapped for the US drug czar position, decides to cruise the hood and bust into crack houses
vigilante-style. Oh, yeah, I can just imagine Barry McCaffrey, the real-life holder of that position, going all Dirty Harry without being followed by a pack of reporters. Catherine Zeta-Jones undergoes a
similarly unbelievable transformation, from pampered pregnant trophy wife to a cold-blooded consorter with killers. The final fate of the informer played by Miguel Ferrer is so laughable it seems lifted
from a really bad radio serial. And Benicio Del Toro's lightning-fast rise from bottom-rung Tijuana cop to a guy who gets to sit in on a top-level summit between the US drug czar and his more-or-less
equivalent in Mexico seemed a tad expedient.
Other things I didn't like: There are two places in this movie where Soderbergh seems to be saying, "Maybe all of this is too subtle. I'll throw in two quick lectures about the unwinnable war on
drugs, just to beat people over the head with the obvious." After Miguel Ferrer goes off on a point-by-point rant, DEA cop Don Cheadle even asks him if he thinks he's on the Larry King show. Note to
Steven: Having a character in your movie point out a bad-dialog moment does not excuse it. The second occasion is even worse, when a prep-school student lectures Michael Douglas for what seems like a
solid minute about drugs-'n'-racism. The moment does not ring true at all.
One last quibble: The first time you see a bunch of teens sitting around doing drugs, you just know that one of them has to OD. But even more offensive, in a strange way, is the rich-girl
character who descends into literal crack-whoredom in what seems like, oh, maybe a couple of weeks' time. Now, I'm sure that plenty of privileged, straight-A, private-school students who are heavily
into extracurricular activities take drugs. But I don't think they would be so mindlessly stupid about it. (I think it would be a lot more likely when she runs away from home that she would go into hiding at
a friend's summer house, for example, than "taking it to the streets" right away.)
Despite those lapses, there actually is a lot to like in this movie. The whole hopeless attitude toward the war on drugs throughout the film is actually a hopeful sign, if it gets even a single one of
the idiots in Congress to realize that the war on drugs is a war against common sense. Early on in the film, Michael Douglas attends a Washington party populated by several real-life politicians (including
Orrin Hatch and Barbara Boxer, in a bipartisan display of Hollywood-humping egomania). Do any of these jackasses know the meaning of the word "irony?" Did any of them read the REST of the script?
Do any of them care that they are part of the problem, not part of the solution?
A brief aside: I spent last weekend spewing from both ends, thanks to some nasty flu-like malady. Couldn't eat, constantly felt the urge to puke. As bad as my nausea was, I realized that cancer
patients have it about a thousand times worse. And I thought about the fact that it is our wonderful government that keeps chemo patients from using medicinal marijuana to quell that nausea so they can
keep food down. It is our elected representatives who have decided that glaucoma patients can't smoke pot to keep from going blind. It is shameless, hypocritical bastards in Washington who slurp at the
trough of campaign donations from beer, liquor and tobacco companies who have decided which drugs are A-OK and which will land you in a lock-up for life. In a perfect world, every single one of those
smug, evil, self-satisfied pricks would end up writhing in horrible agonies that could have been relieved by the very drugs that are illegal because of their own legislation (or inaction).
Oops, now who's getting preachy?
Back Row Grade: B-
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