MIXED 'TRAFFIC' SIGNALS

Steven Soderbergh's film isn't a plea for drug legalization.

Steven Soderbergh's new movie, "Traffic," is giving moviegoers a crash
course in the market for contraband. On the streets of Manhattan the lesson
begins before they even enter the theater, with enterprising souls scalping
tickets for the critically-acclaimed drug movie at 15 bucks a pop.

The film, which tracks the frustrations of the drug war--from sepia-toned
border scenes of a smuggler's life to rosy-cheeked prep-school lushes--has
met with some of the most effusive praise from film critics since "Pulp
Fiction." But the real story is why the documentary-style flick, which was
rejected by every major studio, has become such a runaway box-office success
just as the permissive atmosphere of Clintonian Washington is giving way to
the tough-love "compassionate conservatism" of George W. Bush.

The drug war was a nonexistent topic during the presidential campaign. With
Mr. Noninhaler handing over the reins to Mr. Youthful Indiscretion, everyone
has been happy not talk about it. Big-name Republicans like Bill Buckley and
George Shultz who once broke ranks and called for decriminalization have
moved on to other things.

So why the big to-do over "Traffic"? Perhaps Mr. Soderbergh had the luck or
timing to join the ranks of other great films that captured particular
social anxieties that were flying just under the radar of their times (think
"Philadelphia," or "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner").

But the funny thing about the political statement of Traffic is that it
doesn't have one.

In the olden days when the war on drugs was starting out, like all wars, it
had a political purpose as well as a military one. It became associated in
the mind of the Nixon generation with opposition to social rebellion and
moral relativism. It was a war meant to save America's children from their
own self-destructive, misguided tendencies.

But something changed when the Nixon generation's children grew up. They
began to see drug use in a more nuanced light, as a youthful rite of passage
for the privileged classes but social pathology for the underclass. The
"war" never really touched affluent kids, who were shielded from many of the
most serious consequences of "experimenting." But drug addiction and drug
fighting was wasting lives, destroying families and creating wholesale chaos
in the inner city.

Those statistics that keep being recited about how one in four black men
under 30 is either in jail, awaiting trial or on probation are largely the
product of the drug war. So now two laudable social concerns are in
conflict--our concern for drug abuse and our concern for the deterioration
of the black family as a result of absent fathers, uncles and big brothers.

Nobody has figured out a happy way to split the difference, and neither has
"Traffic." But what is notable about the movie, and what it has in common
with this year's other, smaller-budget film about the havoc wreaked by drug
abuse, "Requiem for a Dream," is that it starkly connects the drug problem
of the suburbs with the drug problem of the inner cities. Whatever else
these films are saying, they strive to make it clear that white America's
drug problem is not separate from black America's.

The issue is one President-elect Bush may hesitate to take on, since it
would inevitably prompt the press to repeat the old unsubstantiated rumors
about his supposed history with nose candy. But it could become a defining
one for his doctrine of compassionate conservatism. As with his
school-voucher plan or his Medicare proposals, drug policy invites a
pragmatic recognition that more money won't help the problem without a new
strategy.

The "lesson" of "Traffic" has been taken as the scene in which the Michael
Douglas character, a former tough-on-drugs Ohio Supreme Court justice named
Robert Wakefield, turns down the job of White House Drug czar, on account of
his daughter's addiction. "I dont see how we can wage war against our own
families," Wakefield says.

But the real ending note, much overlooked, is provided by Montel Gordon, a
San Diego-based Drug Enforcement Administration agent played by Don Cheadle,
who storms a party at the home of a rap-beating drug kingpin. Gordon's
partner has been murdered, and he's there to vent his rage at the man who
ordered the killing--but also to slip a hidden microphone into the house.

So it turns out law enforcement does have a role to play. For all the "moral
ambiguity" the critics discern in "Traffic," the producers show us that good
guys and bad guys still exist.

Lending verisimilitude to the film's seriousness are cameos of everybody
from Orrin Hatch to Ted Kennedy, but it would be a mistake to see it as a
plea for drug legalization. The film doesn't provide the proverbial easy
answers. Mr. Bush will still have to sort out for himself where
compassionate conservatism ends and the kick-ass kind begins.