ACADEMY FALLS ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL

Soderbergh's Films Typify Obsession With Mediocrity

AND the winner is . . .

The only good thing about director Steven Soderbergh getting two Oscar
nominations for best director (one for the trifling Erin Brockovich,
the other for the impressive if flawed Traffic) is that the split
votes might cancel each other out, making it possible for a truly good
movie to win - a movie like . . .

Ranking art - even a popular art like movies - is fool's play. But if
you're going to rank films, the criteria should be something other
than box-office grosses, warm feelings and (in the case of Traffic)
the misguided notion that it must be important if it's about an
important subject.

Erin Brockovich probably also benefits from people's perception that
it is about something other than Julia Roberts' cleavage and smile. It
is, after all, the true story of the triumph of the little people over
corporate callousness and greed.

Soderbergh created a marvelous vehicle for Roberts, whose movie-star
charisma bursts off the screen, and he handles the material with care.
He has such a nice touch that you almost don't notice that he
manufactures the illusion of drama where none really exists.

The movie fails to personalize the bad guys. It makes do by treating
some of the good guys (corporate lawyers who are more polished than
Roberts' down-to-earth character) as if they're bad, concocting straw
men she can triumph over for the requisite big finish.

Traffic is a much more daring movie. Using a faux-documentary
approach, it juggles several storylines to examine the folly of the
American war on drugs. But here, as in his 1999 movie The Limey,
Soderbergh shows a greater feel for formal experimentation than for
characters or drama.

The most interesting part of the movie, the only story we haven't
already seen done as well a dozen times before on episodic television,
is the part featuring Benicio Del Toro as a Mexican cop surrounded by
official corruption.

The film is being championed by people and organizations concerned
about America's drug policy. The Lindesmith Center, a drug-policy
foundation based in New York, last week announced a new Internet site
(StopTheWar.com) that uses stills from the movie to bolster its
message that current strategies aren't working.

But the part of the movie featuring Catherine Zeta-Jones, Dennis Quaid
and Don Cheadle, about prosecution of a high-level American
trafficker, plays like an episode of Miami Vice. And the subplot
featuring Michael Douglas as a new drug czar is crammed with
undramatized proselytizing and melodrama that don't meld well with the
rest of the movie.

The film has grand intentions, but to compare it to Nashville or The
Godfather, as some reviewers have done, is laughable.