Traffic review

 Number 630 on the top 1000 films of all time is Steven Soderbergh's 2000 crime-drama 'Traffic.'

Traffic follows the drug-trafficking trade from four different perspectives in an inter-connected narrative. Ray Castro (Luis Guzman) and Montel Gordon (Don Cheadle) are two DEA agents aiming to take down drug kingpin Carlos Ayala (Stephen Bauer) through getting their witness Eduardo Ruiz (Miguel Ferrer.) Meanwhile, Bauer's wife Helena (Catherine Zeta Jones) tries to continue the business he left behind. In Ohio, Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas) is appointed the new Drug Czar only to discover his own daughter is a cocaine addict. Finally, in Mexico, corrupt cop Javier Rodriguez (Benicio del Toro) has a change of heart when he witnesses the true horrors of the drug trade.

I'm going to start this review with my usual disclaimer of not wanting to compare films with each other, before immediately comparing Traffic with Crash. Crash is also a multi-narrative, interconnected film that engages with crime and race relations, but it woefully fails where Traffic succeeds. Whereas Crash felt rushed, contrived and half-arsed, Steven Soderbergh's took the time to really explore each character and narrative. The two and a half-hour runtime was an added bonus. It was an ambitious project and anything shorter wouldn't have done it justice.

Soderbergh also made the key decision of adopting distinctive looks for each narrative: Wakefield's story is shot with a blue tungsten filter, Helena's story has an over-exposed diffusion filter and Javier's story has is harsh and yellow. Although that seems to be the case whenever American films depict Mexico. Regardless, it was a good decision that helped to distinguish each narrative. It stopped things from becoming too confusing.

And the drug-trafficking world is one of confusion and chaos. There are a lot of moving parts yet through this multi-narrative, Soderbergh is able to bring all of these parts together in one cohesive narrative. By telling the story through different perspectives, he is able to add a lot of nuance to what could have been a straight, boring black-and-white story. There is a lot more morally grey than people would like to think.

Of course it helped that Soderbergh had a star-studded, ensemble cast. Nine of the cast members have either been nominated or won an Oscar - Benicio Del toro won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for this role and, deservingly so.

I thoroughly enjoyed Traffic. it is a marker of what all good multi-story narratives should be.