High art

>> Soderbergh's Traffic is an epic assault on the drug war

by MATTHEW HAYS

Managing, by some miracle, to out-loop his very loopy career, Steven Soderbergh has taken a confident and entirely welcome turn with his latest, Traffic.

Based loosely on a British miniseries, the film is populated by a sprawling ensemble of characters, all of whom are somehow related to the international drug trade. Like some of the very best Altman films, each cast member holds their own, with artful edits spinning us around each of their various scenarios as they unfold. Catherine Zeta-Jones is remarkable as the unsuspecting wife of a wealthy businessman who, she learns after his arrest, is a drug trafficker. Michael Douglas rises to the task of playing the U.S. government's drug czar, a position he initially feels he can handle, but soon finds the problem in his own backyard as his daughter is revealed to be a cocaine addict. Benicio Del Toro is a border cop, caught up in an underworld so corrupt there appears to be little or no solution imaginable.

That the "War on Drugs" waged by so many U.S. administrations is both disastrous and fraudulent is taken as a given by screenwriter Stephen Gaghan. The ripped-from-the-headlines feel the film has was created by his exhaustive research, which involved interviewing every government official he could find who had anything to say on the issue of drugs as well as many journalists who've reported on the phenom. The result is a seamless realism, a feeling that, despite any of the film's shortcomings, we are indeed watching the Real Thing.

Soderbergh shot much of the film himself and he artfully shifts aesthetic gears throughout, telling his gaggle of stories in constantly morphing hues and tones of varying lenses and film stocks. This should prove jarring, but doesn't; Soderbergh has created an internal tension in Traffic between the naturalism of his performances and the reminders that we're watching his hands at work.

At its outset, Traffic feels like such a deeply cynical film it's hard to know how to interpret Soderbergh's rather open-ended conclusions. There's a streak of idealism here, that's either meant to be taken ironically or that feels a tad out of place in this movie. And given Soderbergh's bipolar oeuvre--this is the same man behind sex, lies, and videotape and Erin Brockovich, after all--we can't possibly read it on the basis of his track record.

This is a relief, especially for Soderbergh fans (and I count myself among them). Erin Brockovich resonated as such a phony, shallow and empty vehicle for the director, it's reassuring to see his grey matter being properly engaged with Traffic--a film that proves you can be smart and still win over the box office.

Traffic is now playing