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Jason Maloney reviews
Entertainment in Video
- Cert:
- Cat.no: EDV 9107
- Running time: 147 minutes
- Year: 2000
- Pressing: 2001
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 24 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: English
- Widescreen: 1.85:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras: Deleted scenes, trailers, B-roll, Soundbites
Director:
- Steve Soderbergh
Cast:
- Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta Jones, James Brolin, Don Cheadle, Benicio Del Toro, Albert Finney
There’s no lack of talent on display in Traffic – from the experienced ensemble cast, to Oscar-winning Director Steven Soderbergh. Indeed it was largely for this highly-acclaimed drama that he won the coveted award earlier this year, although his achievement with Erin Brockovich cannot be overlooked in playing its part in Soderbergh getting the Academy’s nod ahead of Ridley Scott.
Yet, in all honesty, Traffic ultimately flatters to deceive. Whereas Erin Brockovich was a triumph of focused, evocative but still mainstream cinema, this overlong 2½-hour trawl through intricacies of the drug trade uses some less-than-subtle visual ideas and a catalogue of stylised editing effects to bolster what is a fairly standard plot.
Taking its cue from the likes of Magnolia, Traffic centres upon a convoluted and intertwining tale of characters at the business end of illegal trafficking across the US/Mexico border. Newly-elected Government Drug Czaars, undercover FBI agents, Tijuana street cops, powerful Cartels, social climbers and the Military find their paths crossing as the capture of a middle-man dealer for one of the two major Cartels in South America sparks off an unravelling chain of conspiracy, corruption and murder.
Soderbergh dresses all this up in sharply differing hues for each branch of the narrative (ghostly blue tinge for most of the federal US sequences, hazy sundrenched gold in Mexico, normal suburban daylight), a device which at first lends Traffic an impressively unique ambience until, without any real depth to the film’s actual content, the appeal wears off. When it transpires that Traffic has less to say than first impressions might have suggested, no amount of trickery can cover up the lack of bite in the laboured, unconvincing conclusions.
Despite this, the performances from all concerned are accomplished, with Don Cheadle and the maverick Benicio Del Toro simply outstanding. Complete with utterly convincing accent (to non-Hispanic ears) and an armoury of diginified, intensely thoughtful mannerisms, Del Toro’s is the single most compelling character in the movie.
Quite why Soderbergh, after constructing such an arresting scenario in the opening half-hour before painstakingly expanding upon the triumvurate of storylines, should knowingly preside over a chronically weak final third remains a mystery. The footage which ended up on the cutting-room floor includes a host of scenes with the very qualities the final cut suffers from (flashes of wit, deprication and general levity), which would indicate that somewhere along the way he either had a change of heart concerning the type of movie Traffic ought to be, or else the decision to rip the heart out of the film was made for him from those on high. Had some of these key sequences been included in the final cut, Traffic might have been close to 3 hours long, but the upside would have been less frustratingly non-committal and episodic.
Intelligence, allied to a balanced outlook, is an all-too-rare commodity in Hollywood these days. While Traffic’s integrity and desire for authenticity on such a combustible subject is something to applaud, the lack of willingness to inject even a modicum of palpable tension at key moments or some much-needed humour (black or otherwise) eventually counts against it. So downright earnest and determined is the film not to offend or take any sides, that as an effective piece of drama it simply falls flat.
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Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.