Traffic
Stars Michael Douglas, Benicio Del Toro, Catherine Zeta Jones
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
At all major cinemas.
REVIEWED BY STUART MUNCKTON
Traffic, the latest film by director Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brockovich), uses a series of inter-related stories to depict the futile "war against drugs" the United States government spends so much time pontificating about.
The related stories range from the latest government drug czar (Michael Douglas doing his standard impersonation of a tree) very quickly finding his naive hopes for making real headway in "fighting drugs" come crashing down, to a small-town Mexican cop (Benicio Del Toro, who, unlike Douglas, does a reasonable impersonation of a human being) finding it impossible not to get drawn into the large-scale corruption that plagues Mexican society.
This film works because it feels real: for most of the film, the situations, characters and dialogue mix gritty realism, stylish film-making, excitement and humour.
It is also reasonably honest. Drug abuse isn't presented as something simply affecting black or poor communities in the US: we see bored rich white kids, including Douglas's own daughter, engaged in hard drug use.
The corruption of the Mexican government is also shown: the top ranking general assigned to head their part of the drug war also happens to be the head of one of Mexico's two major drug cartels.
Also depicted is the uselessness of the large amount of money pumped into stopping drug trafficking under the current "drug prohibition" policy. As an informer points out to a Drug Enforcement Agency agent, the DEA is simply used as a tool by competing cartels.
But the DEA agents are depicted as earnest believers in their cause, despite it clearly being a lost one. Two of them, one black and one Latino, stake out the mansion of a wealthy business figure. They're excited to be there because finally they're going to get one of those "at the top, one of the rich ones, one of the white ones". To no avail: the drug lord beats the legal system.
The disappointment is in the ending; an otherwise reasonably uncompromising film ends in totally Hollywood fashion. For the good guys who are still standing, things end well. Douglas's junkie daughter gets treatment and he learns to "listen", the DEA agent gets to avenge the death of his partner, and the Mexican cop gets to watch the baseball (although you're never sure why he couldn't go to the baseball before).
There are other flaws as well. Whilst it reveals the futility of the "war on drugs", it does not offer any clear alternative or get to the root of what lies behind the policy.
Instead, the "war on drugs" is presented just like Douglas' character is: genuine but misguided, and so capable of seeing the error of his ways. At one point, Douglas dramatically stops halfway through a speech to the media and declares "If we want to fight a war on drugs then it means our own family members are the enemy" and walks out. A fair point but just a tad unlikely.
Whilst the wholesale corruption in the Mexican officialdom is exposed, the American side gets off much more lightly. There's a rich, white ruling-class figure at the head of one of the drug cartels, sure, but he's depicted as just one rotten apple. The Mexican system, in contrast, is portrayed as tainted to the core.
Despite its flaws, it is still a fantastic flim, one which does give a real sense of the corruption and depravity which is the reality behind the US government's endless rhetoric.