TRAFFICTRAFFIC
Traffic is the best movie to date by one of the most interesting and versatile contemporary filmmakers, and its cameo appearance in selected theaters in the last days of December allows it to snag the prize as the the best American movie of 2000. To be sure, 2000 was the worst year for American movies in memory, but Traffic also holds its own against the year's best foreign films--Yi Yi, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Dancer in the Dark. Soderbergh's ensemble piece about the "war on drugs" is a perfect entertainment with plenty of smarts that's as sharp and efficient as a razor blade.
The whole cast is super, but Benicio Del Toro and Don Cheadle, as narcotics agents on opposite sides of the USA/Mexico border, give breakout performances. Del Toro, who resembles a dissolute uncle of Leonardo DiCaprio, is great as a Tijuana cop who gets sucked into high-level corruption. Cheadle and his cop partner, played by veteran movie thug Luis Guzman, provide some expert comic relief. Catherine Zeta-Jones Douglas and Michael Douglas Zeta-Jones both emote well as parental units who differently fight the threat to their respective families created by drug trafficking.
In directing Traffic Soderbergh seamlessly interweaves narrative threads that address not only the corruption and violence implicit in drug traffic and drug wars, the "supply" side of the issue, but also include subplots exploring the social roots and implications of the widespread "demand" for drugs. These scenes, mostly involving the daughter of Douglas' drug czar character (played nicely by newcomer Erika Christensen) flirt briefly with the gutter-junkie melodrama of the flashier and nastier Requiem for a Dream, but manage to keep afloat. With his broad cast of characters, Soderbergh is able to convincingly demonstrate the social, economic and political imperatives that make drug traffic inescapable and insoluble, and evoke its human cost, while also allowing some plausibly hopeful individual outcomes. Which characters end up as victims and which as survivors is somewhat predictable--Soderbergh's narrative style is too understated for any big surprises--but watching things play out is always compelling.