TRAFFIC: SPRAWLING AND DARING CANVAS OF DRUGS, DECEIT

In 1989, those of us who were based in London remember a vivid and
compelling British television mini-series titled Traffik that
dramatically re-enacted the rampant drug smuggling from Pakistan to
the UK often via Europe. The engrossing series had used a clutch of
Asian actors and had received critical praise.

Eleven years later, cinema's virtuoso director Steven Soderbergh has
made a sprawling and often rivetting movie entitled Traffic that
encapsulates the politically explosive and sensitive issue of drug
trafficking between the borders of the US and Mexico.

Traffic, even before its national release, is now on the list of
every single renowned critics ``list of ten best films of 2000.'' It
has already won the prestigious ``Best Picture'' award from the New
York Film Critics Circle besides the ``Best Director'' award for
Soderbergh. Other film critics' groups have been eager to acclaim the
film in an otherwise desultory year for good quality cinema.

Traffic also has earned a raft of nominations from the `Golden Globe'
awards--which is a precursor to the Oscars.

The five globe nominations for Traffic included besides ``best
picture'' and "best director", "best supporting actor" (Benecio Del
Toro), "best supporting actress" (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and for "best
screenplay". Given such remarkable acclamation, --including the New
Yorker's respected critic David Denby pronouncing it the "the most
exciting American movie of the year''. It is little wonder that
Traffic has such an irresistible Oscar buzz going for it.

Fighting illicit drug trafficking has been a matter of paramount
concern for successive American presidents from Gerald Ford to Jimmy
Carter to Ronald Reagan to George Bush to Bill Clinton.The shadowy
nexus between the drug trade and international terrorist groups have
been documented time and again.

Past US administrations have striven mightily to contain the drug
trade from Colombian cartels to other South American drug
overlords--often in cooperation with local governments. This fight
becomes less effective when it is not in America's backyard--when
they stem from distant countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Myanmar
and Thailand where drugs have often provided the sustenance for arms
procurement for groups ranging from Osama Bin Laden's cadres to
others like the Lakshar-e-Toiba, sundry Kashmiri militant groups to
the Tamil Tigers.

In Soderbergh's mosaic of wilful deception and systematic corruption,
where a number of toes and corns are brutally squished, three
characters take centrestage: A Conservative Ohio State Supreme Court
Judge Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas) appointed by the US
President as the anti-drug czar who is oblivious that his sullen teen
daughter (Erika Christensen) is a free-basing junkie till he
discovers her stoned out of her mind. The second character, and this
a mesmerising performance by Benecio Del Toro, is a plucky Mexican
policeman on the Tijuana border who tries to steer clear of the
pressures of bribes and political influence--almost eerily similar to
those top Indian cops might face. And then there is Helena Ayala
(Catherine-Zeta Jones) --wealthy, ruthless matron from Southern
California who is unaware that her husband is a notorious drug
smuggler.

The plots and interlocking sub-plots unfolds with dizzying speed
jumping from Tijuana, Cinnicinati, San Diego to Washington to the
White House and back to a bleak Mexican desert providing the broad
canvas for a futile war being fought against the multibillion dollar
drug trade.

The performances are both in English and Spanish and Soderbergh
provides a ``documentary feel'' to the movie by often using the jerky
handheld camera.

The star cast is huge---that also includes Don Cheadle and Luis
Guzman as two undercover DEA agents manipulated by the Zeta-Jones
character, Dennis Quaid as a lecherous lawyer and Albert Finney as
chief of staff.

In one "authentic" Washington cocktail scene--several US senators who
have fought for tough anti-drug trafficking measures --such as Orrin
Hatch, Barbara Boxer, Chuck Grassley--also appear fleetingly. But not
every critic has been dazzled by Traffic--political commentator
Richard Cohen --wrote a bilious piece for the Op-Ed columns of the
Washington Post condemning it for its "world of cliches". The
outraged Cohen demanded to know if anyone living in the US would be
unaware that some members of the Mexican military could possible be
corrupt? How could DEA agents leave a marked witness's car unattended
so that a bomb could be planted ? And how could the Ohio judge
(Michael Douglas) be so dumb to be unaware that his daughter is often
so spaced out which the writer branded as a "thermonuclear cliche".

Cohen goes on in this cavilling fashion giving no quarter to the
platoons of critics who have simply branded Traffic as the best film
of the year. Perhaps the opinion writer in his anxiety to spot the
cliches offers little credit for the film's propulsive screenplay
that invests this docu-drama with a feel of a thriller.

Little wonder then that the New York Times critic, Stephen Holden,
normally such a fastidious reviewer, exulted: ``It is an utterly
gripping, edge-of-your-seat thriller.

Or rather it is several interwoven thrillers, each with its own tense
rhythm and explosive payoff''.

While the highly rated movie critic of Rolling Stone, Peter Travers
describes Traffic as a ``real cannonball, a hardass drama'' adding
"nothing with the daring of Traffic has emerged from this timid movie
year''. For all of Cohen's acidic comments about Soderbergh's
directorial skills, Travers praises him for shaking "us with this
roaring flame of a film".

The film's newsworthiness is unquestionable as a Republican
presidency assumes charge.

The George W. Bush administration is expected to be much more
unforgiving on international terrorism and its octopus-like tentacles
mired in the drug trade.

The question is whether it can come up with brand-new initiatives to
meet the menace.

In the film, the anti-drug czar Wakefield, effectively portrayed by
Douglas (a meaty role inexplicably turned down by Harrison Ford) in
the end delivers an exhausted address at the White House where he
mutters words like "perseverance" and a "ten-point plan". It sounds
hollow--the implicit content in the character's message is: How can
you fight your own family?

Soderbergh attempts to evaluate the culture of addiction and
instantgratification, seeking new thrills to fight boredom.

Perhaps the next real life drug czar will not sound as hopeless as
the Douglas character in Traffic.