FILM CRITICS NOT WEARING ANY CLOTHES

"Traffic," the new film by Steven Soderbergh, is on almost everyone's list
of the top 10 films of 2000 and has already won the New York Film Critics
Circle Award. It did so, mind you, before it even opened here - not to
mention anywhere else. That is just one of the oddities of this film. The
other is this: It's stupid.

This is a movie about the drug trade between the United States and Mexico.
The plot is based on the assumption that you have not read a newspaper in
the last 20 years and would, for example, find it surprising that some
members of the Mexican military are corrupt. For authenticity, certain U.S.
senators appear at a Washington cocktail party, but after that one scene,
nothing again makes sense.

For instance, DEA agents guarding a witness who has been marked for death
leave their car unguarded so that some mean-looking Mexican assassin can
plant a bomb under it. In the same vein, these same agents, guarding the
same incredibly valuable witness, do not hesitate to open the hotel room
door to someone who merely identifies himself as the person bringing
"breakfast." Soderbergh must think the "D" in DEA stands for "dumb."

But then, lots of people in this movie are dumb. The major drug lord, for
instance, comes right out of jail and uses the phone in his own house to
talk business, and threaten an associate. A bit earlier, some Mexican bad
guys kidnap some Mexican good guys from the streets of San Diego and take
them across the border handcuffed to the car's shoulder belt mounting.

This, though, is nothing. In this film, the U.S. drug czar (Michael
Douglas), is a one-time conservative Ohio judge who does not realize that
his very own daughter is - you guessed it - a druggie. Before you can even
begin to appreciate this thermonuclear cliche, the 16-year-old girl runs
away from home and becomes a hooker to support her habit. Does her father
the drug czar call in the police to find this runaway child whose life is
clearly in danger? Not if he's Michael Douglas he doesn't. He searches for
her himself.

To list the absurdities, stupidities and inanities of this movie would not
only take the rest of this column, it would be pointless - but something of
a public service. You will not likely find it done anywhere else. Instead,
all but one of the critics I've read are in thrall with Soderbergh's
movie-making whiziness. He shot the film himself. He used a hand-held
camera. He employed filters to impart a parched, brownish tint to Mexico, a
brightish one for San Diego and a blue one for Cincinnati, the hometown of
our dumb-as-a-post drug czar.

It was Alfred Hitchcock who used the term "icebox scene" to describe the
moment when a moviegoer realized that a part of a film made no sense. If
that moment occurs hours after the movie is over - when the person who has
seen the movie is reaching into the icebox for a late-night snack - that's
permissible. But if the icebox scene occurs as you are watching the movie,
then that is not permissible. This movie is a train wreck of iceboxes.

You will note that nowhere in this devilishly clever movie review did I
used the term "bad" or "dull" or "boring." "Traffic" is none of those
things. I realize, as do you, that a movie need not make sense for it to be
fun or even emotionally moving. "Casablanca" is hardly realistic. Among
other things, people did not escape from concentration camps in Palm Beach
suits. It is, however, emotionally true.

"Traffic" is not in that league by a long shot. It is simply a good-enough
film. It could have been a lot better, however. But the critics, who write
as if they are fellow filmmakers, refuse to hold the real filmmakers to
even a minimal standard of cliche avoidance or verisimilitude and, instead,
widely praise a movie that makes no sense. It should receive an award for
Most Cliches in a Feature Film With Tinted Lenses. It will probably,
instead, receive an Oscar.

I, too, admire Soderbergh. He is a talented director. But he knows he
cheated on this one and, worse, he knows he got away with it. The
obligation of the critics to call him on his cliches and absurdities was
not exercised in this case. I give the film three stars. I give the
reviewers none.