CAUGHT IN 'TRAFFIC'

Jan. 5 , 2001 - 'Traffic' will convince you the war on drugs is
indeed a real war and not just political rhetoric. But it may also
convince you it can be won.

In this film about the impact of drugs on American life, lives are
lost, families are uprooted, liberties curtailed. Drug busts occur
with militarylike planning and firepower. In this regard, Steven
Soderbergh's film (his second 2000 release, following "Erin
Brockovich'') is a resounding success.

It interconnects several stories about the drug trade with tautness
and urgency. You feel as if you're caught in a battle unfolding in
real time at any place in the real world. The story occurs
simultaneously in Tijuana, San Diego and Cincinnati, primarily.

"Traffic" sometimes has the impact of a tense war film or a grittily
modernist, post- "Godfather" crime epic such as "Heat" or
"Goodfellas." At other times, it is a sprawlingly serious,
contemporary ensemble-piece drama such as "Magnolia" or "Short Cuts."
Helping the director is the large cast, which includes Michael
Douglas (his second high-profile 2000 performance, after "The Wonder
Boys''), Catherine Zeta-Jones, Don Cheadle, Benicio Del Toro, Dennis
Quaid and Luis Guzman.

But while some (especially Del Toro) are extremely good, this film
works because of the director - who also served, using a pseudonym,
as his own cinematographer. He has used filters, shutter speeds and
lighting to give each story its own look. The Cincinnati scenes, for
instance, exude a cold blueness, while the Mexican ones have a
feverishly yellow brightness.

Soderbergh also shows cautious interest in the work of Denmark's
Dogma proponents of cinematic naturalism. He often uses a hand-held
camera and tries to favor natural light to make "Traffic" seem like a
documentary. As a result, the film keeps you off-guard and
apprehensive, but also engrossed.

"Traffic" is what I like to call a "movie movie." It uses the tools
of cinema - the artistry - to transfix and transport you.In short,
it's out to convince you that it's about you rather than "them." It's
visceral, but it also has a brain.

The story has some shortcomings. It's melodramatic in the way that
Douglas, who plays Ohio Supreme Court Justice Robert Wakefield, must
attempt to rescue his addicted teenage daughter Caroline (Erika
Christensen) from the squalor of Cincinnati's mean streets. The
screenplay by Stephen Gaghan ( "Rules of Engagement'') is adapted
from a British miniseries on the worldwide drug trade, "Traffik."

The film starts, with appropriately sun-bleached and saturated color,
outside Tijuana as a backroads bust is about to take place. It
unfolds like a guerilla-war confrontation. Two cops, Javier Rodriguez
(Del Toro) and Manolo Sanchez (Jacob Vargas), find their work
interrupted by a military intervention they don't quite understand.
It will lead to their everdeepening involvement in the drug war's
Mexican campaign.

Two of "Traffic's" best performances are in the Mexican-set scenes.
As Javier, a beefy cop both nervously wary and courageously
dedicated, Del Toro gives a smart, sexy, dynamic performance that
becomes the soul of the film. And as General Salazar, Mexico's
fascistic and corrupt crime fighter, Tomas Milian's odd mannerisms
and facial expressions, along with his bizarrely, mockingly sweet
demeanor, make him a powerfully memorable villain.

Meanwhile, across the border in San Diego, DEA agents Montel Gordon
(Cheadle) and Ray Castro (Guzman) try to keep an unlikable informant
Eduardo Ruiz (Miguel Ferrer) safe from harm as he prepares to testify
against a major drug supplier named Carlos. The latter, played by
Steven Bauer, is a consummate man of power and wealth whose pregnant
wife Helena (Zeta-Jones) conducts herself with carefully likable
noblesse oblige. When she discovers her husband's true source of
wealth, courtesy of his slimy attorney (Quaid), she undergoes a
transformation.

To save her family (Mexican drug suppliers have threatened her son
while her husband is in jail), she ruthlessly plots to have Eduardo
assassinated. But she has an unusual gutsy streak - at one point
surprising Montel and Ray by marching right up to the van in which
they're hiding to offer them cold drinks.

This story is generally well-handled, even given the odd accent
spoken by the Welsh-born ZetaJones. It does have a garishly tough,
manipulative edge that recalls 1970s TV-show potboilers such as
Douglas' "The Streets of San Francisco." And Quaid's character
recalls Sean Penn's in "Carlito's Way" just enough to make you wish
it were as good.

However, what really stands out are the relationships of the centered
Montel, the profanely funny Ray and the excellent Ferrer's Eduardo.
The extended scene in which the cops corner him at a roadside storage
center and chase him into a kids' restaurant where he tries to hide
in a bin of colored balls is especially exciting.

In the story involving Douglas (he shares no scenes with wife
Zeta-Jones), Robert has been named the new federal drug czar because
of his judicial integrity. But he finds he can't concentrate on the
country and his own family satisfactorily.

Neither he nor his wife (Amy Irving) realizes their daughter Caroline
has fallen in with a group of preppie druggies at a Cincinnati
private school. (Some of the scenes of their drug use play like a
leaner, meaner version of a Whit Stillman film.)

When Robert discovers Caroline's problem - she is zonked out and
seemingly demonically possessed in a bathroom at home - he finds he's
living every Dad's nightmare. He can't talk to her.

This story arc is just too extreme - although well-acted and
excitingly, artfully photographed. Caroline runs away and embraces
the squalor and dangers of a big city at its worst, forcing dad to
search for her and plead for her return. I didn't believe it could
happen this way. But it does lead to "Traffic's" most important
moment - when Robert says, "I don't know how you wage a war on your
own family."

It's a good question, one that will haunt you after you see
"Traffic." But you'll also remember the valiant efforts of Javier,
Montel and Ray to do their job without being corrupted or compromised
by their daily exposure to evil. "Traffic" shows us a world of war -
right in our own backyards.