THE FILM 'TRAFFIC' SHOULD BE ON EVERYONE'S LIST - TO AVOID

NEW YORK -- "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 -- or 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 past 20 years and would, for example, find it
surprising that some members of the Mexican military are corrupt. For
authenticity, certain U.S. senators -- Barbara Boxer, Orrin Hatch,
Chuck Grassley and others -- 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 south of the border handcuffed to the car's
shoulder belt mounting. For some reason, neither the American nor
Mexican border customs officials notice and ask, "Why are those two
men handcuffed to this car's shoulder belt mountings, amigo?"

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 to whiz-kid Soderbergh's movie-making. 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.