Traffic
Trafik
Starring: Michael Douglas, Don Cheadle, Benicio Del Toro, Dennis Quaid, Catherine Zeta-Jones
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Running time: Two hours and 20 minutes

It's estimated that $19 billion is spent each year on combating the drug industry in the U.S. Yet, as one of Traffic's characters declares in a rare, but convincing lapse into moralizing, "For someone my age, it's a lot easier to get drugs than it is to get alcohol."

This statement paints a pretty morbid picture of today's anti-drug reality. What Traffic does is provide a 140-minute elaboration on the mechanisms of the hopelessness of fighting drugs. It does not preach, and it does not wave a magical wand with an ultimate solution. It is satisfied with its humble, but fertile task - to simply show how things really are and provide enough palpable scenarios to allow anyone to draw their own conclusions.

Steven Soderbergh's narrative is structured in a way reminiscent of Robert Altman's Short Cuts or Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia. There are several stories, which unfold independently - about two Mexican anti-drug cops with conflicting loyalties; an American judge appointed supreme drug-fighter only to be chilled by a personal aspect of his war; a mid-level drug-distributor chased down by two American agents; a high-level drug-distributor posing as a respected businessman being arrested; and his wife who never suspects where the money she spends come from.

Unlike what one expects, all these stories are not tied together in a copout ending, nor do they interact in any sublime or faithful way. Soderbergh's intention was not to study the mysteries of faith, but to expose how far-reaching and binding drugs can be. Still, the stories seamlessly and skillfully intercut, and the film retains a hypnotic coherence. One is never lost in the story; the pieces start to fall into place unobtrusively but unrelentingly.

The sun-bleached images of Mexico introduce us to Javier Rodriguez (Benicio Del Toro) and his partner, who intercept a large drug shipment and are intercepted in turn by an army general who displays a real desire to crush a drug cartel, but for the wrong reasons. Javier is steadily shocked by the hopelessness of what he does. He makes $312 a month for fighting crime, while a kid selling coke on the streets gets $500 in two hours, tax free. Javier soon finds that his efforts to play by the law are compromised by the attitude of his own partner towards drug money.

Meanwhile, north of the border, two American agents (Don Cheadle and Luis Guzman) arrest a modest drug distributor (Miguel Ferrer), and his testimony leads to a trial against the biggest distributor of Mexican drugs in California (Steven Bauer). His wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is shocked to find that her husband is not a construction entrepreneur and goes through a startling, but convincing, transformation when her desire to preserve her lifestyle kicks in.

Then we meet Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas) who is delegated the task of eliminating the drug trade by the White House. He shares the generic opinions, says the right things, arranges meetings with the right people, and, above all, believes that he can fight drugs. He's one of those specialists that believe in solving problems from the comfort of an armchair, and that you don't need to see drugs to fight them. That is, until he finds out his daughter is a cocaine addict and has his value system turned upside down.

Traffic was adapted from a British TV series describing the travel of heroin from the plains of Pakistan and Turkey to the streets of Europe. The storylines are largely preserved and the frightening aspect is how easy it was to adapt this story to the American-Mexican reality.

While one could argue that the four Academy Awards that Traffic received were addressed to the issues the film raises rather than to its cinematic qualities, one could also argue that bringing the issue so convincingly to light is reason enough to hail it as one of the cinematic events of the year.