Traffic

Another of the movies that I had the chance to DVR during one of the free preview weekends is Traffic. It's going to be on again tomorrow at 4:01 AM ET on Starz, or three hours later if you only have the west coast feed.

Traffic is a complicated story spreading out over multiple plot lines which ultimately interconnect, so I'll mention the plotlines individually. First up is one set in Baja California in Mexico, not too far from Tijuana which is just across the border from San Diego. A pair of local cops, Javier (Benicio Del Toro) and Manolo (Jacob Vargas), have been tipped off about a drug shipment being passed through a remote part of the area, and they've shown up to interdict it. The operation more or less works, but it is ultimately commandeered by General Salazar (Tomas Milian), who is the head of Mexico's nationalized operation in the War on Drugs. Javier and Manolo start working for Salazar the national anti-drug operation.

The drug running that Javier and Manolo stopped was being run by the Obregón outfit, based in Tijuana They're one of two rival cartels in the Mexican drugs trade, the other being the Juárez cartel. You might think that there's room enough for both cartels, but as we've seen from one 1930s gangland movie after another, that's a load of crap, and both cartels are bringing every measure they can think of to try to strike a mortal blow to the other cartel.

As for that shipment in the beginning of the movie, it was supposed to go across the border to San Diego and a dealer named Ruiz (Miguel Ferrer). A couple of DEA agents, Montel Gordon (Don Cheadel) and Ray Castro (Luis Guzmán), have been undertaking surveillance on Ruiz, and they're able to interrupt a drug shipment, getting involved in a shootout that injures Ruiz in the process. While Ruiz is in the hospital, he decides to turn state's evidence and name his superior, Carlos Ayala (Steven Bauer). He's arrested, putting a major hurt on his wife Helena (Catherine Zeta-Jones), who finds that she's facing liens from the IRS, as well as demands from the Obregón people in Mexico. Helena is understandably pissed at her husband, but over time, she learns that she's going to have to take matters into her own hands to defend herself.

Well away from San Diego, judge Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas) is judging a client quite harshly in a drugs case in Ohio. It's going to be his last case as a judge, as he's been nominated by the President to be the new head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. He's happy to take the new job, although it's going to take him away from his family as he goes first to Washington, and then to Mexico to try to get the Mexicans to create something similar to the ONDCP. Gen. Salazar gets named the rough equivalent to Wakefield's position.

While Wakefield is away from his family, he has no idea what's going on with his daughter Caroline (Erika Christensen). She's a high schoo student, and she and her friends do many of the typical things they do on weekends, like a more juvenile version of the recent college graduates from Metropolitan. There's a lot of BSing going on and some drinking, but also some drug use, which I'm sure would infuriate Dad. Caroline's boyfriend Seth (Topher Grace) teaches her how to freebase cocaine, while another friend overdoses, which brings the teens into the purview of the police. This probably ought to disqualify Dad from holding an anti-drug job, but he being a right-thinking person with the right connections inside the Beltway, everyone's able to get the police to sweep it under the rug.

All of the subplots come together, more or less, although Caroline's addiction isn't really tied to what's going on with Ruiz and Ayala out in San Diego (not that it needs to be). Although the story is quite a complex one, it's still easy to follow, and a compelling, well-told story. The acting is good, benefited by the fact that the scenes with Mexicans only are all done in Spanish with subtitles which, considering how much of the movie is set in Mexico, means a lot of subtitles.

If there's one big flaw, however, it's director Steven Soderbergh's use of color. The Mexican scenes, especially those in the seedier and more outlying areas, are generally brown and oversaturated, while a lot of the scenes with the Wakefields are given an extreme blue filter. I think the use of the filters was way overdone to the point of being intrusive, as if that's more a part of the story than the events happening on screen.

A small amount of mention is made of the demand side of the drugs question, a side which doomed alcohol prohibition 70 years earlier and which probably ought to doom the War on Drugs, except that the War on Drugs has been an excuse to give the government all sorts of powers that it can use in non-drug-related areas and doesn't want to give up. Hell, they've expanded it into the even more pernicious War on Opioids, something Soderbergh probably couldn't have envisioned back in 2000 when the movie was released.

The TCM Shop lists Traffic as being available on a Criterion Collection DVD, while Amazon has it on Prime Video.