Steven Soderbergh’s follow-up to ’Erin Brockovich’ is an emotionally draining, astonishingly acted ensemble piece about the drugs trade between Mexico and the USA.
Using an unlaboured documentary style, he tells three loosely interrelated stories: Javier Rodriguez (Benicio Del Toro) is a Mexican cop working with the unscrupulous General Salazar (Toms Millian) to destroy a powerful drugs cartel.
Stateside, dedicated police duo Ray Castro (Luis Guzman) and Montel Gordon (Don Cheadle) are going after the ostensibly respectable Carlos Ayala (Steven Bauer). He’s a drug-runner whose pregnant wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is blissfully unaware of his business but must handle his unsavoury affairs after he’s been locked away.
Overseeing ’’the war on drugs’’ is newly appointed drug czar Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas). He’s naturally conservative, earnest and morally resolute, but things get complicated when his 16-year-old daughter (Erika Christensen) turns out to have a monumental crack habit...
It’s a difficult story to capture in words, let alone on screen, but Soderbergh manages it.The performances are almost universally excellent, with Guzman and Cheadle predictably superb and Douglas never better he’s outstanding in several scenes that were improvised with ’real life’ politicians, journalists and customs workers.
Del Toro is also magnificent as Rodriguez, a man struggling with his morality in a country where law enforcement is seen as an ’’entrepreneurial activity’’.
The film is slowly paced and, very occasionally, the exposition of the ’drugs problem’ is a little heavy handed, but these are minor quibbles it works as a compelling thriller, a moving drama and astute social commentary nothing can stop ’TRAFFIC’.