Traffic

Rating:
Summary: 14
Review: This movie is SO boring! It drags and drags. DON'T buy this movie.

Rating:
Summary: A thrill ride.
Review: Michael Douglas' best work is seen in this film. His portrayal of a haughty politician is undeniably realistic. Every character involved in this film is marvelously played. Benicio del Toro executes one of the most brilliant acting jobs ever. His Mexican cop is unforgettable. Catherine Zeta Jones is fantastic as a wealthy Southern California housewife.

The direction of this film is marvelous. It is captivating, and truly gives you the feel of every scene in the film.

Traffic is not a movie I would normally have been interested in seeing, but, luckily I saw it. I was particularly impressed.

Rating:
Summary: No Entertainment Value
Review: Although I agree that this movie has a unique storyline, that's all this movie has. The writing may have been incredible, but I'm no critic, so I'm not rating this movie on that. I'm a common moviegoer, so I rated this movie based on entertainment value. This is quite possibly one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I was bored multiple times while watching this movie. Right from the beginning, the storyline was too difficult to grasp. Even the two friends I was watching this movie with agreed that this movie was the exact opposite of entertaining. The media may have hyped this movie up, but it definitely did not gain popularity by common word of mouth like most great movies. I would definitely not recommend this movie to somebody in the mood for watching something entertaining. The only reason you may want to watch this movie is for it's uniqueness.

Rating:
Summary: Best Movie Since American Beauty
Review: This movie is wonderful. It follows three stories through the war on drugs. In the first and best storyline, Benicio del Toro plays a mexican cop, who gets mixed up in one of the major druglords of Mexico's powerful cartels. When he gets in deep the FEA wants him to provide them with information to take down the cartel. The second story revolves around Michael Douglas, the new drug czar for America. He gets too invovled in his own work that he doesn't even notice his daughter is fighting her own addiction to drugs. The last is about Catherinr Zeta-Jones. She is a wealthy woman married to the perfect husband, so she thinks, until he is busted for running a major drug ring. She is not used to the lifestyle without money, and all her friends leave her, destroying her future and her son's, not to mention she is pregnant. Facing all this difficulty she must do something fast, involving her husband's business. All the stories are believable, and poignant. The thing I liked about it was that even though the main characters met the same people, they never actually crossed paths. The stories were predictable, but with drug movies telling basically the same story it is hard to not make it that way. Even then it is pulled off nicely right before our eyes. It shows what certain people do with the drug problem, but doesn't give an end all cure all to the problem. I liked that and many other things about it. It deserved Best Picture, Gladiator didn't. Watch this beautiful movie, and you will be changed forever. Spend whatever it takes to obtain it.

Rating:
Summary: This film is so over-rated
Review: This film is not complex or interesting. It is an all-star, worthless mess. It is extremely annoying visually. Scenes in Mexico are YELLOW, while scenes in the USA are BLUE. Winner or several Oscars........Why? This is junk!

Rating:
Summary: Traffic jam on a four lane highway
Review: "Traffic" is an overlong, unnecessarily complicated movie that thinks it has something new to say about the 'war on drugs', but doesn't. Those who criticize the Nancy Reagan "Just say no" mantra in favour of movies like this -- that ask a lot of questions but provide nary an answer -- are just kidding themselves into complacency.

Ostensibly an attack on the same story from four different viewpoints, I'd say only half of the action was relevant and necessary.

The Mexico scenes, roughly 90% in Spanish, survive mainly on the talents of its hulking lead, Benicio Del Toro. He never does anything flashy or obvious, but ably shows his character's dilemma. And his charisma is just enough to save the day, especially when surrounded by a crowd of two-dimensional villains.

The scenes featuring Don Cheadle and Luis Guzman are entertaining and surprisingly funny. But they really have no place in this movie. These two fine actors have wonderful chemistry together, but it feels like they have been spliced in from a low budget but finely written buddy movie. I'm not against a little comic relief in the midst of a tense drama, but it just never seemed appropriate here. Their clowning undermines the drama (In interviews, director Steven Soderbergh has floated the idea of shooting a prequel featuring these two; a better idea might have been scrapping "Traffic" altogether, and focusing on that instead).

The Catherine Zeta-Jones scenes are so mishandled that I don't know where to start. First, the buzz on her character is that she quickly goes from being a sheltered innocent to a Machiavellian drug lord, because her situation demands it. Thus bringing up a series of ethical questions and moral dilemmas. I bought the sheltered innocent part, but the rest was just laughable. A gradual transformation might've worked, but she falls so easily into the role vacated by her jailed husband that you have to question how much she really knew all along. And on top of that, her mothering instincts seem to leave her completely. After her son is threatened, the boy never again appears in the film. Would a competent mother ever let him leave her side after that? It is an odd choice, amplified by the fact that Jones lobbied hard to play the role while pregnant. And don't get me started on the ineptness of Dennis Quaid's character, not to mention his acting.

Finally, we have the Michael Douglas scenes. I knew this story would be awful the minute I saw his ridiculous hair. It makes him look like an ignorant moron, and his actions in his new job as Drug Czar don't dispel that perception one bit. The whole point of his character was to reveal that no matter how sheltered and mundane your life is, the drugs can find even you. So his daughter gets high. A lot. And when she heads down to the bad part of town, well, our hero Mr. Douglas has to go find her (as if it's the job of the Drug Czar to clean up all the drugs by himself!). At one point he transforms into an older and blander version of his fine vigilante character from "Falling Down". I half expected him to get a buzz-cut and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. I'd like to say something about the characters of his daughter and his wife, but both were so insubstantial and cliched that there's really no point.

I liked Soderbergh's comeback film "Out of Sight", where he ably flipped back and forth through time and story (a technique used less effectively in his next film, "The Limey"). Here, he does pretty much the same thing, only not as extreme. It doesn't work nearly as well. And just because one character from one of the threads passes by on the street a character from another of the threads doesn't mean that everybody's life is intertwined. I used to think that the connections linking the characters in "Magnolia" were the epitome of tenuous, but "Traffic" out does even that rambling mess (which leads me to believe that if you liked "Magnolia" -- I didn't -- you'll probably like "Traffic" too). And Soderbergh's cinematography (credited as Peter Andrews), where he uses extreme colours to denote a change in geography, is intended to be artful, subtle, and symbolic. It comes off, rather, as heavy handed and condescending to its audience. We don't need colour coding to understand that we've gone from Mexico to Cincinnati (does he think we can't read his title cards?).

I realize that as of this writing, mine is the minority opinion. Just understand that when a talented filmmaker like Soderbergh fails to fulfill the promise of a subject pregnant with possibilities, I feel we have to call him out on it. Maybe he'll get it right next time.

Rating:
Summary: A Movie With Great Purpose
Review: Most movies are only to entertain (but I guess that's what they're for!). In this case, Traffic is both entertaining and important, maybe because there are a lot of people out there that do these things. Traffic isn't talking street traffic, but drug traffic. Only one thing could make this movie better: the cast. Everyone is great as their role, which adds to the fun and realism. This was a great movie. Buy the DVD, it'll be tight.

Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: This is the kind of movie that makes most other films pale by comparison. A virtuoso tour-de-force of what is so fantastic about great cinema. It pulls us in from the first few frames, and we are held in its intricate web until the very, very end. It's the kind of movie that makes you sit forward in your seat, just waiting to see what will happen next. It's watchable and enjoyable and interesting and good, but it's also disturbing, mainly in its gritty, no-holds barred realism. It is this realism, however, and Soderbergh's willingness to show the dark underbelly of the drug world, that makes the film so effective.

Traffic is made up of three simultaneous stories which intersect and play off of each other to form a cohesive, multi-faceted picture of the war on drugs, and the realities of drug creation, trafficking, the criminal and law-enforcement side of drugs, as well as drug use and the ramifications of that use. Steven Soderbergh pulls a fine performance out of every single one of his actors in this film. From Benicio Del Toro, who turns in a fabulous, Oscar-winning performance as a Mexican cop in a deadly Morality game which takes place on both sides of the border, to Michael Douglas, undoubtedly likable as a hero this time, in the role of a high-ranking Drug Enforcement Official in DC, to Catherine Zeta Jones as the pampered, unwitting wife of a drug czar in Southern California, the performances and storytelling here are flawless. Each of Soderbergh's three stars tells their story with honesty, revealing realistic ambivalence and the un-masked and mysterious imperfection of human nature. Each reveal true-to-life emotion as people caught between a rock and a hard place, with consciences and agendas at various points between. Other brilliant turns include indie favorite Don Cheadle as a law enforcement official, and the young, Julia Stiles-lookalike Erika Christensen, whose riveting, harrowing performance as the drug-addicted daughter of Douglas's character is one of the most effective 'threads' in the film. Speaking of threads, Traffic is like a patchwork quilt of sorts, with stories which intersect and come together to create a bigger, more accurate and compelling picture of one of our biggest major international problems. People pass each other unknowingly on the street, their stories happening simultaneously as in life, each person's actions rippling out to the broader sphere of this drug world, like the water in a pond. Blood is shed, lives are lost, dreams are destroyed, and new hope is born. This film definetely has the feel of a documentary, or at least a docudrama, which makes sense, because it was based on a European miniseries/documentary entitled "Traffik." It is compelling because watching the film, you know or are afraid to know that there is or there may be someone out there -- a smart, but cast aside teen perhaps, on the streets of your city, shooting up for the first time, falling under the spell of a drug's poison into homelessness and prositution and addiction, if not into the arms of death itself. In this film, as in life, there are coverups and bungled operations, lies, deception, and power games. There are also good people, people who are trying to make a difference, who sometimes can and sometimes die trying, or give up at the futility they feel when being faced with such a powerful renegade army of greed and carelessness.

Traffic is *excellent* on all levels: cinematography, directing, pacing, plot, acting... Soderbergh pulls all these things together and makes a water-tight, unsinkable ship of a movie. Disturbing, gripping, moving, engaging, flawless. Better than his other Oscar-winning film of the moment, Erin Brockovich. By a long shot. And that was a good movie. Five stars.

Rating:
Summary: Just say yes
Review: Steven soderberg vividly presented several distinct yet interconnected story lines. There's the Kentucky Judge (douglas)who learns that fighting drugs begins at home. There's Helena (Zeta-Jones), a wealthy matron who discovers upon his arrest that her husband is really a drug dealer. there's a Mexican policeman(Del-Toro)trying to stay clean and escape from the corruption surrounding him. there's also two DEA officers trying to nail Helena's husband. this movie is never preachy, although sometimes it feels like a documentary. Del-Toro gives a rousing performance, as does Catherine Zeta-Jones and Erika Christensen. (Micheal douglas' character could have used some work)This movie basically comments on the morass that is the drug problem in this country today.

Rating:
Summary: Traffic moving in reverse
Review: I saw this film in a theater in a Latin American country, in "reverse" from audiences in the States i.e. all the Mexico scenes without subtitles and the U.S. scenes subtitled in Spanish. I was mesmerized by Benicio, who with his Latin/Slavic features (fabulous lips/eyebrows & eyes) did his best to mask his pretty Caribbean accent in Spanish.

Maybe I've lived in a Latin American country too long now, but, I felt afterwards that there was an overriding accusatory tone toward Latin American countries, that after all, really are just the "messengers" in the war on hard drugs. (Remember the old saying, Don't kill me, I'm just the messenger"?) The real problem is the consumption of/demand for cocaine in so-called "Developed Countries" (yeah, "Developed", as in a developed taste for drugs.) Why do so many people in the United States feel the need to self-medicate with hard drugs? This is the bigger question, and out of the scope of the movie.

I felt extreme "My Eyes Glaze Over" boredom with practically all of the M. Douglas scenes, where "suits" speak Governmentese to address The Problem. The drugged-out teenager group-scenes were similarly boring, pierced-navel gazing scenes, but the "jumping" camera worked here--like how one feels when one is buzzed and only catching snippets of surrounding conversations. As far as the Zeta-Jones storyline, why couldn't we have seen her being the Boss of the Stateside Op for a while? Now that would have made her character more interesting.

I loved Benicio's Zacatecas-looking character. I didn't like the final scene with him though, the baseball scene. I felt Soderbergh was saying; "Look, these Mexicans have stolen the youth and innocence of our young, white adolescents with their drugs, AND NOW THEY'RE STEALING OUR NATIONAL PASTIME!" The only thing missing was a final shot of a burned apple pie sitting on the ballpark burrito vender's cart.