Grade:  B

Director:  Steven Soderbergh		Released:  December 2000
Writer:  Stephen Gaghan, from Simon Moore's miniseries		MPAA Rating:  R
Players:  Don Cheadle, Benicio Del Toro, Michael Douglas, Erika Christensen, Catherine Zeta-Jones		Running time:  147 minutes

Ratings System

Benicio Del Toro gets all the accolades and received an oscar nomination for his Traffic role, but for my money, his is the third best performance in the movie.  Don't misunderstand me, Del Toro is excellent, but I like the job that Don Cheadle and Erika Christensen did better.  Maybe I'm just a fan (I loved him in Devil in a Blue Dress, Boogie Nights, and even Volcano), but Don Cheadle carries this movie.  He plays a DEA officer who is in the thick of one of the story lines involving a drug importer.  Whenever Cheadle's on-screen, I snap to attention.  He has an intelligent casualness about him that I really respond to.  Christensen plays a drug-addicted high-school student.  And I believe her for every minute she is on the screen.  At some points I am so disgusted with her, I believe she is a real person that Soderbergh somehow got on film, not just an actor in a role.  And that, to me, is where Del Toro comes up short.  He is very good, but he also looks to me like he is "acting".  I never feel like he IS the character.  Christensen also gets the best and most memorable line in the film, "Hi daddy."  That line creates the only scene that carries any real impact.  I wish there had been more scenes like that.

Traffic is a monster of a movie, it takes on big themes in big ways.  It reportedly contains 135 speaking parts, filmed on 110 locations across 8 different cities.  While I was never bored (thanks to all the great performances), somehow it didn't have the impact I was looking for.  I heard a guy on the radio suggest that Traffic should be required viewing for all high school students, suggesting that students would be ... scared straight.  Well, at the screening I went to, there were some teenagers there, sitting nearby, and they had a grand ol' time, laughing it up at all the moments that were intended to invoke thoughts of "Oh, man. I hope that never happens to me."  And that pretty much sums up why I was disappointed with this movie.  It's just not 'hard' enough to jolt anybody into seriously taking time to think about America's drug problems.

- crocoPuffs