Pubdate: Sun, 31 Dec 2000
Source: Times of India, The (India)
Copyright: Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. 2000
Contact:  http://www.timesofindia.com/
Author: Ramesh Chandran

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.
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