Culture Watch
In this issue:
Losing Battles
Traffic
Written by Stephen Gaghan
Directed by Stephen Soderbergh
The three separate stories of "Traffic" focus on the war on drugs from sharply different angles with the single dispiriting but inevitable conclusion that it is fought one battle at a time on a shifting front-line and you can't always tell which side is winning and which side is losing.
Director Stephen Soderbergh sets up his trio of plots and characters with the immediacy of breaking news In the blinding glare of the Mexican sun on an empty bleached terrain white as pure cocaine, a policeman named Javier Rodriquez and his partner intercept a truck-load of drugs. Far away in Ohio, a straight-arrow judge is readying to go to Washington, D.C., as America's new drug czar, while in California two undercover DEA agents bust a low-level smuggler and persuade him to turn witness against one the drug ring's kingpin.
Each story has an individual color palette, imparting a distinct mood, and they all ripple with tension. Jumping from one to another without artificially weaving them neatly together, Soderbergh credits the audience with the intelligence to follow his lead.
Goodness takes a beating from corruption, and idealism gets poked in the eye by reality. Judge Wakefield, played by Michael Douglas, shines with optimism about his new post, but is blind to the fact--his wife isn't-- that their pretty teenage daughter Caroline with her preppy chums is rapidly moving through harder and harder drugs. He is just as naïve about the main players in the drug traffic from Mexico, putting his trust in the wrong man to be his counterpart south of the border.
When his addicted daughter runs away and ends up selling herself for a hit, the judge realizes that the enemy is within. There are wrenching scenes of users and dealers, but the resolution is not entirely believable. Drugged-out Caroline looks too plump and fresh-faced after her squalid descent, and the Wakefield family bounces back to togetherness much too easily.
A second family is facing turmoil, and the stakes are getting higher. After the two DEA agents, (the excellent Don Cheadle and Luis Guzma´n) get the goods on the California drug honcho and arrest him, his pregnant wife Helen (Catharine Zeta Jones) refuses to see her richly appointed life-style disappear, and arranges an assassination to get her husband off the hook. The plan takes a nasty turn, and the wrong man is killed. It looks as if the hubby will get off scot-free, but Cheadle has a little surprise in store.
The centerpiece of the film --and the most compelling of the three tales--revolves around Javier. In the role, actor Benicio del Toro gives one of the best screen performances in years, and should just be given the Oscar right now. With his partner Manolo, Javier is pulled deeper and deeper into the rivalry between two powerful Tijuana cartels. It is a deadly minefield--one that has been set by a wily army general--and Javier needs all his cool to move through it. His face impassive and his eyes saddened by having seen too much, Javier watches and waits. When he is forced to participate in a murder, the wait is over.
There's a nicely subtle symmetry in the paired relationships between the main characters. The two Mexican cops and the two U.S. agents are bound together as intimately as if in a marriage. They protect each other, share worries, dangers and jokes. The death of one is unbearable to the other. The judge and his daughter are tangled together in a web of mistrust, anger and disillusion. So are the drug-lord husband and his wife. The two families choose different means, but the ends are the same: family survival. And the war goes on.
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