Rating: 
Summary: RED LIGHT!
Review: I loved it! I don't make a habit of purchasing DVDs unless i've seen the movie. Well, I've seen the movie... twice as a matter of fact. Michael Douglas is one of my favorite actors. There was drama, there was action, there was intrigue. What more could you ask for? If you're looking to add a good, and I mean good, movie to your collection, I'll say that you won't be dissapointed. This is one that you can put on for friends that have different tastes, but all will enjoy. Take the plunge.
Rating:
Summary: rivetting stuff
Review: i wathed this movie in india and i liked it. i was in serious mood that day and it was like reading drug encyclopaedia after seeing this movie. however i found it biased against asians and african-americans. come on now , there is much much more in india than beggars in calcutta. but west is always fascinated with looking down at developing country.anyway coming to movie, i didint like zeta jones, she over acted, and why was dennis quaid wasted in the role it could have been done by aby b grade actor. i liked the phootography and music , also del toror was good. but the end was abrupt and i didint notice when 3 hrs passed. good dtuff alltogether.
Rating:
Summary: what's the problem!!! It's a great movie!
Review: Traffic is a great movie that should have beaten Gladiator for the Oscar. It is thrilling and disturbing and artsy and accessible. I loved it. I have read some negative reviews, and not one review mentioned anything specific that I can agree with or even relate to. however, i can respond to notion that caroline prostituting herself for drugs with a black guy is like a racist's worst nightmare, and therefore pandering to the racist audience. To me, that scene didn't try to make any racial point at all. 75% of people in the Over-the-Rhine district of Cincinnati are black, and the script called for the man to be black, since it would be kind of weird for all the other street shots of the city to have black people in them, except the character that caroline gets involved with. And besides Caroline prostitutes herself with a white business guy too later on and it's just as disturbing to the white audience, so what's the big deal? The film is more offensive to the Indian Hill community than the black community. It portrays teenagers in Indian Hill as snobby punks with no direction in their lives and with nothing to do but snort cocaine. It didn't have to be portrayed with such contempt. Like, haha, they're the ones who are screwing themselves up! Personally, I don't feel angry about it because in a way, it's kind of funny, and plus I thought it was cool to see the vans driving around my friend's house and know that in them were a bunch of famous people. The fact is, if you didn't like the film it was because you thought it was stupid, not because of a racial thing that doesn't even exist. But if someone IS to argue about the ignorance of the film, there is a heck of a lot more contempt directed at my community than at the black community, not that it really even bothers me all that much.
Rating: 
Summary: An entertaining movie...
Review: I have to say I was a little dissapointed with the movie because of all the hype, but is was still really good. It has a few different story line witch all kept my interst. I think everyone should check it out and rent it, but I wouldn't buy it, there is no reason for repeat viewings.
Rating: 
Summary: The Wool Over Our Eyes
Review: Who pulled the wool over our eyes? As a people, we have been bamboozled, we have been hornswaggled, into believing in a horrible fallacy, a lie so big even the Nazis would quake in awe. I'm not talking about our electoral process. I'm not talking about the constant misinterpretation of the Second Amendment, or the belief that whites are somehow superior to all other races. But who in the hell told us that "Traffic" was a good movie? So what do we have here, we have like eighteen different intertwining stories that all mesh into a web of cocaine-encrusted celluloid. For starters, we've got Michael Douglas as Bob Wakefield, the brand-new head of the United States Drug Prevention Initiative Policy Blah Blah Blah. Hole Number One. No head of drug prevention in these United States would be as absolutely clueless as Judge Wakefield. Oh yeah, he's a judge! The guy has no idea how drug trafficking works, doesn't know any of the statistics or the ins and outs of the drug trade in America, and he's the most qualified for the job? Forget it. Okay. So his daughter is on crack. Did I mention that? His daughter is a bonafide crack addict. No pot, barely any booze, straight to the premium: snorting and freebasing. Meanwhile, her father serves as the audience proxy, an earpiece for all of screenwriter Stephen Gaghan's impressive research. So eventually his daughter runs away from her drug retreat and begins sleeping with her crack dealer for free rock, realizing a rich father's worst nightmare: his daughter is sleeping with a black man. All right, enough plot summary. That's for movie reviews, and this ain't a movie review, it's a venting session. Is there anyone reading right now who doesn't think that the War on Drugs only fuels the drug trade in the country, and that it's probably a front for a massive government importing conspiracy? No? Anyone? No? Good. Then don't see the movie. Because that's all they say for two and a half hours. I felt like my brain was going to explode. I haven't hated a movie this much since I saw "Magnolia" and almost chewed out my medulla oblongata. The only real bright spots in the movie came from Don Cheadle and Luis Guzmán, FBI drug investigators who also happen to be great actors. The usually wonderful Michael Douglas comes off as preachy and naïve, while the usually stellar Benicio del Toro - Academy Award winner for Best Supporting Actor for this role, by the way - never changes his facial expression and is just barely vindicated in one of the most saccharine-sweet, manipulative movie endings since "Free Willy." Don't get me started on wunderkind-of-the-year Steven Soderbergh's directing mishaps. Nearly half of the movie was shot on a hand-held camera, producing a theatre-wide seasickness not rivaled since "The Blair Witch Project" and not done half as well. The rest of the movie consisted of artsy trick angles - including an upside-down shot of Douglas's helicopter that made no sense - bright-light shots reminiscent of "Heathers," and shots of nature having nothing to do with the rest of the film. The only bright spot in Soderbergh's messy montage of mediocre vignettes was the section of the movie dealing with the cartel wars in Tijuana. The slightly-off style of shooting, the yellowed color of the film, and the impersonality of the shots made you realize that this was a completely different world. For the most part, however, someone should tell Steven Soderbergh that he shouldn't try to be Oliver Stone. Oliver Stone tried that, and we got "Any Given Sunday." So watch out. Anyway, I've never felt so gypped as I did coming out of that movie. Let me set the record straight: "Traffic" sucks. Go spend your money on "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," or see a NASCAR race, or BEAT YOUR HEAD AGAINST A WALL but do NOT see this movie. Unless you already have. In which case, may God have sweet mercy on your soul.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing and distorted.
Review: It's nice to see Hollywood tackle a serious issue, and the Drug War is one of the most serious issues there is. Sadly, Traffic offers a distorted view of reality. Cocaine is presented here as an overwhelming, almost demonic force. Viewers might never guess that cocaine is actually very similar to alcohol, in that only a minority of users ever become addicts. Worse yet, Traffic seems overtly racist and insulting to Mexicans and African-Americans. The scene where the black drug dealer in the ghetto dopes up the rich white girl and has sex with her is like something out of Archie Bunker's nightmares. Yet it's all done with a gritty, raw style that is quite accomplished and impressive. It's too bad this talent serves such mean ends.
Rating:
Summary: Pretentious, Preachy and false
Review: How sickeningly contrived and preachy can a film be?
Rating:
Summary: overhyped
Review: I was expecting a masterpiece with all hype about Traffic. When I rented the DVD I realized I can't truse the general public. The whole plot taking place in America was very missleading and innacurate. What was depicted is not a good representation of American youths who are involved in the drug scene. It's on the borderline of a modern day Reefer Madness. I felt like I was watching a long, badly edited evening news. I would have been much happier just watching the Mexico plotline.
Rating:
Summary: wake up call
Review: This film should serve as a wake up call for our complete defeat in the drug war. Drugs are terrible but have always and will always exist and this film perfectly outlines that point. Amazing performances all around. I hope the real drug tsar owns this film.
Rating:
Summary: Congested.
Review: Very long primer on the War on Drugs. It's long because director Steven Soderbergh feels he has to show us EVERYTHING. *Traffic* is three movies in one: the first -- and best -- plot strand involves the moral caginess of a certain Tijuana cop (Bernicio Del Toro) and the multiform levels of ambiguity within Mexican drug enforcement. Clearly, this story deserves fleshing out and deeper concentration -- it needs to be its own movie. But no. There are sops to conventionality that must be thrown to the teeming masses, e.g., the second and third plot strands involving DEA agents on the trail of La Jolla (!) kingpins Steven Bauer and Catherine Zeta-Jones, and a more unrelated story of a newly appointed drug "czar" (Michael Douglas) who learns what it's like to have the War on Drugs waged under one's own roof. The Michael Douglas story is straight out of the "After School Special" milieu: his daughter, with implausible speed, goes from a recreational user to a "crack whore". This is presented with as much banal melodrama as you might expect. The (not really) "bridging" story about the San Diego drug dealers and their DEA trackers comes from Hack Writer's Fantasyland: we're asked to believe that a wealthy, indolent, pregnant housewife (Zeta-Jones), who starts off by worrying about the cholesterol level in her duck-salad, becomes within a few short months Drug-Dealing Catherine the Great of La Jolla, dressed in Prada (accessories by Fendi), toting dolls made entirely of cocaine across the border, ordering Mexican drug cartel bosses around as if they were just so many gardeners or other sorts of hired help that she, as a La Jolla nouveau richie, is accustomed to dealing with. (I live in San Diego and know whereof I speak. By the way, the notion of drug dealers in La Jolla is pretty funny for any San Diegan. Rancho Santa Fe . . . maybe. But LA JOLLA?) Meanwhile, the pair of DEA agents (Don Cheadle and Luiz Guzman) and the informant they're protecting (the always fun-to-watch Miguel Ferrer) provide some chuckles, as well as some Hard Truths about the Futility of the War on Drugs. Soderbergh films each of his mini-movies in a separate color scheme: icy grays and blues for the Drug Czar, hazy sunlight and earthtones for the San Diego shenanigans, and a weird, faded-daguerrotype bright yellow for the Mexico scenes. This somewhat pretentious maneuver will probably be regarded as a fine use of visual interpretation. Despite *Traffic*'s many problems, its congested story threads, and hackneyed characterizations, the cast, at least, is game: very fine performances across the board makes this mess somewhat watchable.
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