Traffic

Those of us who grew up in the 1970s and 80s remember the phrase “The War on Drugs”. Posters with the slogan “Just Say No”, the D.A.R.E. program, and annual school assemblies with the police telling us about the evils of illicit drugs and the dangers of pier pressure were a regular event. This is your brain on drugs, accompanied the image of a frying egg, was all over the television and in print. Millions were spent on anti-drug advertisements. Fifty years later, we are still fighting that war, except now we call it “The War on Cartels,” shifting the focus away from the drugs themselves and onto the men who bring them into our countries, targeting those with addictive personalities and the means to pay for it, whatever the cost. 

When the 2000 film Traffic hit theaters, this war on drugs was nothing new. The stuff shown in the film wasn’t particularly enlightening, either. It’s all stuff that we’ve seen before in numerous television and film productions before. What made it stand out and get noticed by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences was how it was presented. Films about the drug crisis tend to focus on one aspect of it rather than attempting to examine it from all sides. We will see drug cartels, Tijuana cops battling the cartels as well as their own military, lawmakers in America dealing with the addicts in their own homes, drug dealers forced to turn state’s evidence at the risk of their own lives, and more. This is not a typical film with a protagonist taking down a generic drug lord but a more overarching look at the crisis itself.

To accomplish this, director Steven Soderbergh hired a large ensemble cast of known actors, including the newest Hollywood couple in town, Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, though neither shared the screen with each other. Virtually everyone is a familiar face, which makes it easier to keep track of all of the different stories going on. To further aid this, he is also utilizing heavy filters to represent certain locations, such as Mexico, washed out in gold, and Ohio, which is often bathed in a heavy blue filter. This method sometimes works but is also very distracting at times.

To help add authenticity to the film, many elements are cribbed from real-life people and events, inspired by, but not directly based on, facts. Finally, many real-world political figures appear as themselves in the production, lending their familiar faces to a production that highlights the very real and long-standing epidemic of drug abuse and violence. All of this is in support of a story that, despite being multinational, has elements that we can all emphasize with, even if we have had no contact with this kind of seedy environment ourselves. These characters are humanized by excellent actors bringing their A-game and telling us a story that resonates and, thanks to the ongoing and never-ending war on drugs, is still topical.

The story can be basically broken down into three plots. The first is that of Mexican police officers Javier Rodriguez (Benicio del Toro) and Manolo Sánchez (Jacob Vargas). As the film opens, these two men stop a drug transport, arresting the men involved and seizing the bags of drugs. They are then stopped by General Salazar (Thomas Milian), a high-ranking Mexican official who offers Javier a special assignment: apprehend Francisco Flores (Clifton Collins Jr.), a hitman for the Tijuana Cartel, headed by the Obergón brothers. Javier succeeds, and Flores, under torture, names Obergón cartel members who are promptly taken out. But Javier begins to suspect that General Salazar works for a rival cartel, and he has just given the General the power to shift the balance of the cartels in his favor. 

In Ohio, Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas) is a conservative judge, newly appointed to head the President’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, though he is warned immediately that the war on drugs is not winnable. On the homefront, his daughter Caroline (Erika Christensen) has been using cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin, developing a drug addiction thanks to her boyfriend Seth (Topher Grace) introducing her to freebasing. When the two are arrested while trying to drop off a friend at the hospital who is overdosing, Robert has her checked into a detox clinic, but she runs away, and he has to face the realities of the situation, as well as his own failings as a parent.

In San Diego, undercover officers Montel Gordon (Don Cheadle) and Ray Castro (Luis Guzmán) capture Eduardo Ruiz (Miguel Ferrer), a dealer posing as a fisherman. Ruiz gives up his boss, drug lord Carl Ayala (Steven Bauer), in exchange for immunity and is put in witness protection. Ayala is indicted by a tough prosecutor, hand-selected by Robert Wakefield to send a message to the cartels. But with Ayala in prison, awaiting trial, many of his creditors are now threatening his family if they don’t get paid. Ayala’s wife, Helena (Catherine Zeta-Jones), fearing the safety of their son and their unborn child, hires an assassin, Flores, to take out Ruiz and end the trial, but Flores is killed instead by a sniper as retaliation for his cooperation with General Salazar. In desperation, Helena makes a deal with the Obergóns that will eliminate Ruiz and forgive her husband’s debt.

This is a complicated story but not a difficult one to follow. As I mentioned before, having a sea of familiar faces in the cast greatly aids in our ability to always know where we are at and stay acclimated to the various stories. The use of the color filters, on the other hand, feels like unnecessary shorthand, especially the blue filter that remains inconsistent throughout. The gold filter over Mexico is more consistent but also feels cliché, overused in many films to depict Mexico. It distracts from the cinematography, which is perhaps a key reason the camera work went ignored by the Academy.

The most emotionally effective of the three stories is the one in Ohio, where the actual effects of drug use are shown. Ruiz makes the observation that by arresting him, the police are only aiding the cartels and they have actually accomplished nothing; people will still get their drugs and there will still be addicts everywhere. One of those is Caroline Wakefield, who, despite being the daughter of an influential judge assigned to the war on drugs, is an addict herself. Her mother, Barbara (Amy Irving), has known about the drug abuse for six months and has ignored the problem, calling back to her time experimenting with drugs in college and just assuming Caroline will grow out of it. She has convinced herself that this is just a phase and it will solve itself. Robert was blissfully unaware his daughter was doing drugs at all and is incredulous of his wife’s attitude towards it. Neither sits down with their daughter to get to the root of the problem. 

Instead, they send her away to be “cured,” thinking they can pawn this off on someone else to deal with, maybe even thinking more about avoiding bad publicity for Robert than about their daughter’s needs. Only when she runs away does he go into real panic mode and begins to think like an actual parent again. It is his arc to come to the realization that the real problem is that he hasn’t been communicating with his daughter and finding a real way to help her, one that is much more hands-on. This plot line is one many can identify with, having children or siblings that have gone down a dark path and not knowing how to reach out to them and extend a helping hand.

The other two plotlines are more straightforward and could be seen on any number of television series about dealers and cartels. While they explore the complexities of the law and how to fight an unwinable war, they also offer nothing we haven’t seen elsewhere. Still, there is a lot to enjoy here, even if neither story offers any surprises as to where they are going. 

It’s no surprise this film offers no firm answers to this epidemic. There aren’t any real answers in reality; this is true to life. These cartel leaders are not stupid. They are violent and resourceful and have a lot of money at their disposal. One character even mentions that they have more resources available to them than the government does. You can fight this war, maybe even score a few victories, but the demand for the product coupled with all that money and resources means that it will never be eliminated. For every cartel leader eliminated, there will always be another to step in to take their place.

This is a well-balanced film populated with a lot of great performers. However, because there is so much story to tell and not a lot of time to tell it, many of the characters are not given a lot to latch on to beyond the action on screen. This makes most of them no more deep than surface level. This is especially a problem with Montel and Eduardo, who spend most of the film babysitting Ruez. When Eduardo meets an untimely end, we feel little emotion beyond that one of the good guys bought it. Luiz Guzmán is a welcome face to the cast and brings goodwill just by being here, but his character isn’t built up enough for any real emotional response to his death. In contrast, Manolo is shown to have a wife and so we are inclined to have more of an emotional attachment to his fate. 

Soderbergh has crafted an impressive feature about a very tricky subject that has touched most of us in one way or another. We see the police procedural side of things, but even more importantly, we see the personal side of it, too. Most of us know someone or are related to someone who has or had a drug addiction. We can relate to that. Seeing it depicted here in the midst of all the other things brings that home in a way other shows haven’t. Acknowledging that there is no easy answer to the problem further drives home the difficulties of the war on drugs and why it will never go away. These are things most other films or shows don’t take the time to emphasize, and it is why this film is on the Oscars list for the year 2000.

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Picture: Marshall Herskovitz, Edward Zwick, and Laura Bickford

Best Director: Steven Soderbergh (won)

Best Supporting Actor: Benicio del Toro (won)

Best Screenplay - Based on Material Previously Produced or Published: Stephen Gaghan (won)

Best Film Editing: Stephen Mirrione (won)

____________________________________________________

Release Date: December 27, 2000

Running Time: 147 minutes

Rated R

Starring: Don Cheadle, Benicio del Toro, Michael Douglas, Luis Guzmán, Dennis Quaid, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Amy Irving, Erika Christensen, Topher Grace, James Brolin, Albert Finney, Steven Bauer, Clifton Collins Jr., and Miguel Ferrer

Directed by: Steven Soderbergh