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The better a film of this type, the more difficult the questions it poses. And these are industrial strength, migraine quality noggin busters. So we speculate in frustration. How about throwing more money and manpower into the fray? Of course, it would mean raising taxes. Think that would fly?
Or how about just legalising it all and taking the profit out of drug sales? True, it might exorcise the criminal element? But wouldn't ready availability at the State Store attract new potential addicts? And even if it didn't, what would happen to the tens of thousands of Americans who earn their daily bread by fighting the so-called War on Drugs? Scouring for solutions, thinking folk will agonise for days after seeing director Steven Soderbergh's immensely unsettling film. People with children will find it doubly disturbing.
Splendidly directed by Mr. Soderbergh, the trenchant screenplay by Steven Gaghan (adapted from the miniseries Traffik by Simon Moore) employs a four-pronged attack in its tour of the drug world's manifold devastation. The director uses a different tint to identify each. First, there is the bleached out, sun-drenched atmosphere that identifies Mexico, just south of the border. There we learn about the supply side of the problem. And to make things even more interesting, there just so happens to be a power struggle in progress between the Juarez and Tijuana cartels. Tossed into this mix is Benicio Del Toro as Javier Rodriguez, a local cop who finds himself swimming in shark infested waters when a general enlists his covert co-operation. Mr. Del Toro supplies the film's standout performance.
Javier's counterpart in San Diego is Detective Montel Gordon, played by Don Cheadle. He's a determined drug-buster who manages to collar bigwig Carlos Ayala (Steven Bauer) early in the doings. But will he be able to make it stick at the trial? And will everyone who's supposed to testify still be alive by the opening gavel? The tension attendant to these two scenarios is of the seat-edged variety.
Edgy on another level, but equally savvy, is the part of the tale that deals with America's official response to the crisis at hand. In other words, the politics. Embodied by Michael Douglas, the government's answer to the problem is Robert Wakefield, a conservative judge from Ohio just recently elevated to Drug Czar. And though this is a demotion for Douglas (after all, he was the chief executive in The American President), he is nonetheless convincing as the hard-nosed and dedicated public servant. But perhaps the ambitious judge was a bit too zealous in his climb to recognition. Maybe it would have helped if he had spent a little more time at home. Which leads to the last angle of the screenplay's multifaceted approach, the most distressing of all.
It concerns Caroline, the new drug czar's daughter very ably portrayed by Erika Christensen. She's fifteen, an honour student at a posh country day school, involved in every extracurricular activity and, alas, a crack fiend. When Traffic is eventually shown on television and we are forewarned that certain scenes depicting drug use may prove too graphic for some viewers, it's Caroline's squalid descent into the bowels of substance abuse that they'll be talking about.
Soderbergh's action-filled diatribe puts in high relief the vicious circle of factors that make the world's drug cartels the modern-day equivalent of the antichrist. That is, they couldn't exist were it not for human greed and weakness. Hence there is no glamorisation of narcotics use, no romantic representation of gentleman drug lords. And by skilfully blending the fictional account with the harsh facts of reality, and then fluidly intertwining the various tales, the movie's dramatic impact is undeniable. Its clarion call to common sense is piercing.
The movie's intermittent use of grainy stock and washed out colours tends to get overdone in a film school sort of way. But this is a minor style flaw that doesn't keep the effort from striking a very sensitive nerve. Artistically putting the truth out there and letting it speak for itself, the director happily avoids the sort of preachiness that can make films of social import seem both tiresome and disingenuous.
Of course we knew going in that ultimately education is the answer. And now we've learned even more. Hopefully it's enough to keep our children from getting stuck in Traffic.
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