Traffic Review
by Tim Wick

OK, Raise your hand if you didn't know that the war on drugs is a waste of time and money. Please put your hand down, Mr. President.

In the 1980's, Nancy Reagan spent who knows how much time agonizing over an anti drug campaign before she came up with the brilliant "just say no" slogan. Three little words - it's just that simple.

Last week, a federal judge removed himself from the sentencing of a convicted addict because he felt the sentencing guidelines were unfair when it came to nonviolent drug offences.

Every year, the United States wages a war it can never win because it doesn't understand the enemy.

Stephen Soderburg's new film, Traffic shows us the enemy and it is ourselves. How effective will someone be as a drug czar when he typically has a drink or two before dinner to "take the edge off?" How can an honest cop make a dent in the drug trade without simply making some other drug dealer richer? How can a Tiajuana cop ever hope to make a dent in the corrupt system without working within it? What choice does the wife of a drug dealer have when he is taken to jail, his assets are frozen and her family is threatened? What is the difference between experimentation and addiction?

Moving between three storylines and focusing on more than a dozen characters, Soderburg makes a strong case for the fact that we are fighting the wrong war in the wrong places. Even as Michael Douglas' drug czar starts teaching himself about the pattern of drug traffic in the United States, his daughter is experimenting with freebasing cocaine. The message here is simple - stopping the drug trade does not start with the cartels. As long as there is demand, there will be a supply.

>From the other side of the border, Benicio Del Toro (in a performance that has won him numerous trophies already and will probably score him an Oscar as well) is a cop who has been beaten down by the corruption in the police force. He is a good cop, but he is outnumbered to such an extent that if he does not work for the cartels, he will never have a chance of damaging them. He, unlike Douglas, knows that stopping the drug trade is not just about bringing down the cartels. Destroying one cartel simply creates another.

Catherine Zeta Jones is a wealthy socialite who discovers her husband is a drug dealer when the DEA shows up to arrest him. The question is, will arresting one drug lord create another one as his wife tries to figure out how to make it on her own? Her role is pivotal because she provides a link between the Mexican cartels that Del Toro is fighting and the American distributors that Douglas is waging war against.

The three storylines intersect, but they never connect. Instead they are meant to put fourth Soderburg's compelling argument against the status quo. In a particularly telling scene, Douglas asks his new staff what they would do to win the war on drugs if money and manpower was no object. The room becomes eerily silent. Later in the film, Del Toro tells two DEA agents what he would do. His idea is neither expensive nor complicated but it as creative as they come and probably more effective.

In addition to directing, Soderburg was also chief cinematographer on this film. His uses different film stocks to accentuate the different worlds in which the characters walk. Del Toro's Mexico is grainy and yellow, Douglas' Washington is slick and blue, Zeta-Jones' San Diego is just about right. In other films, I have found the use of film stock and filters distracting, but it worked so well in Traffic that I really didn't think about it after my first experience with it.

Traffic could be perceived as a wee bit preachy by some, though I did not feel that way. A scene at a press conference could easily have turned into a monologue on the ills of the drug war, but it does not. Instead, most of the important information is left unsaid because screenwriter Stephen Gaghan figures we already know what might be said in prolonged monologue so he spares us. Instead, we are given two sentences far more powerful than a speech could have been.

The message of hope in Traffic is that there is a way to win the war on drugs, but you have to know where and when to fight. The war against drugs will not be won on the border. It will not be won in the courts and it will not be won in Washington. If you work hard enough, the war can be won in school, at home and in the parks.

Traffic

Five Beakers
(out of five)

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