SCREENINGS OF 'TRAFFIC' PROMPT INTROSPECTION AMONG MEXICANS

MEXICO CITY The acid test for the popular American drug film
''Traffic'' started Friday in Mexico.

It opened on 250 screens throughout the country, the largest Mexico
City debut in recent memory for any movie, domestic or foreign.

And no wonder: Mexico, with its chronic drug-trafficking problem, is
the movie's deeply flawed central character.

The portrayal of the Mexican border city of Tijuana, and what drug
experts fear are systemically corrupt police and military units, has
drawn brickbats from Mexicans who say the movie mischaracterizes
their country.

Many of them are so upset that they are expected to fill movie houses
like never before.

Demand to see the movie even before it officially opened was great,
said Jaime Alcalde, representative for Artecinema, the movie's Mexico
distributor. At three preview showings across Mexico City, theaters
were full, and exit interviews provided a mixed bag of criticism and
praise for director Steven Soderberg's latest film.

''The only thing I can say is that it shows the extremes to which
people can be demonized, without real research into what really
happened,'' said Teresa Gutierrez Rebollo, daughter of jailed Mexican
general and former anti-drug czar Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo.

Accompanied by her father's attorney, Gutierrez Rebollo said after
the screening that a pivotal Mexican character in the film, a corrupt
army general, bore ''no relation'' to her imprisoned father.

Behind the scenes, American officials such as US Ambassador Jeffrey
Davidow have seen preview copies. Even Mexican President Vicente Fox
is said to have gotten a sneak peek early last week. Aides would not
disclose his reaction.

''Many Mexicans will be upset by the way Mexico comes off in the
movie,'' said Ana Maria Salazar, a former Pentagon drug policy
official who was raised in Mexico. ''It's a good movie. But if it's
reality the movie's makers wanted, they missed the mark on some key
points.''

Salazar, a visiting professor at the Autonomous Technical Institute
of Mexico, pointed out dramatizations in ''Traffic'' that go beyond
reality, such as the film's premise that all Mexican officials are
linked to drug dealers.

''It shows some things that have happened,'' Federal Judicial Police
Commander Xavier Villegas told the Mexico City daily newspaper
Reforma after a preview. ''But we must make clear that this is made
in the United States, and only the Mexicans are the bad guys.''

Even Tijuana is distorted. In the movie, the Mexican border city is a
sepia-toned, tumble-down mess stuck in a scruffy desert. The Mexican
border scenes reportedly were shot in Nogales, across the Arizona
border.

In reality, healthy chunks of Tijuana are thoroughly modern and
cosmopolitan, and the city sits on the Pacific Coast amid the same
mild temperatures enjoyed by its American twin city, San Diego. That
city, by contrast, is shot in full color.

''I was offended by those colors because the United States looks so
real, and Mexico looks so dirty and dark,'' said Martha Jimenez, a
25-year-old bureaucrat, as she emerged from a preview in Mexico
City's upscale Polanco neighborhood. ''But in the final analysis, I
suspect, that darkness is a reality for us.''

Even its harshest critics in Mexico give ''Traffic'' high marks not
only for accurately portraying widespread problems in their country,
but for not sparing the United States for its drug appetite and a
moral ambiguity behind the drug-war rhetoric.

This weekend, ''Traffic'' is expected to top the $100 million mark in
the United States and Canada, the traditional blockbuster barrier. It
also is up for five Oscars.

In Mexico, it was lauded by preview audiences for its frankness and
originality, even if its multiple story lines closely followed a
British television miniseries of the same name.

The movie avoided copycat status by folding in true stories from the
US-Mexico struggle against traffickers, such as the Gutierrez
Rebollo-like character and the easy co-opting of Mexican law
enforcement by dueling drug cartels.

In the movie, the fictional Obregon brothers stand in for the real
Arrellano-Felix siblings who run the Tijuana Cartel.

And like in real life, the Juarez Cartel's leader is presumed dead
after botched plastic surgery. In the movie, the Juarez chief
reappears with nasty facial scars.

The authentic Juarez leader, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, died in a failed
attempt to alter his looks, according to Mexican officials and US
Drug Enforcement Administration agents who saw the body and the
autopsy reports.

The greatest success of ''Traffic'' may have been its seizure of a
wave of national self-examination.

The hope for a changed Mexico came across to some viewers in the
movie's final scene when a Mexican police officer with ties to the
corrupt Mexican general becomes a DEA informant. His payoff from the
Americans: lights for a kids' baseball field.

''It showed us some hope for Mexico; that the Mexican cop was playing
the game for something good,'' said Axel Burgueti, an Argentine actor
and singer who now lives in Mexico. ''He could have used his position
for something else, but he chose something for the kids.

''That's a good message.''