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Traffic
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When once
asked to define the postmodern condition, the American critic Dana Polan
characterised it as a culture turning over so rapidly that those who vote for
Academy Awards can these days remember only the last few blockbuster movies
that have been rammed down their throats.
Steven
Soderbergh's Traffic is the latest
American film to benefit from this amnesiac buzz. Judging by the wildly
honorific quotes splashed over the promotional campaign, it seems that many American
reviewers are so starved for any quality product – and so clueless about where
to look for it – that they are willing to talk up even a slightly good, edgy
film to high heaven.
Traffic is a modestly good movie. Its
action-packed, multi-threaded plot has been compressed from several story lines
in the British TV series Traffik (1989). Something has certainly been lost in the translation: a tougher sense
of the global politics of the drug industry, and a more confronting set of
dramatic and ethical quandries.
But
Soderbergh's film demands to be judged on its own terms. And it does make for
compelling viewing as it whisks between
It's on the
Mexican side that the truly gripping power plays occur – between General
Salazar (Thomas Milian), a brutal lawman with a hidden agenda, drug dealer
Francisco Flores (Clifton Collins, Jr.), and two cops desperately trying to
play the game and stay alive, Javier (Benicio Del Toro) and Manolo (Jacob
Vargas).
The third
major thread in the film concerns a pampered wife, Helena (Catherine
Zeta-Jones), who suddenly finds herself having to
negotiate a criminal underworld once her husband, Carlos (Steven Bauer), is
arrested, and the two cops on her tail, Montel (Don Cheadle) and Ray (Luis
Guzman). Those who remember Traffik will quickly see how much Soderbergh pulls his punches in the depiction of
Helena's transformation.
Although
pretending to tackle a hard subject, Traffic merely flirts with its political and moral themes. Soderbergh and writer
Stephen Gaghan speak of the film's cohering idea as control – and the lack of
it. But this could be said of virtually any crime film, especially those better
examples of the genre that Traffic evokes through its casting and style, such as Scarface (1983) and Mixed Blood (1985).
Soderbergh
doubles here as his own Director of Photography (under the name of Peter
Andrews). The visual mannerisms he introduces into the telling of this tale
become completely maddening. Doubting a contemporary audience's ability to tell
the difference between the different sub-plots (or between
Mexico
and the
U.S.), Soderbergh uses a laborious
colour coding scheme which is sheer hell on the eyeballs – and pointless as
well as useless.
Soderbergh
is one of many mainstream filmmakers who has recently
come under the trendy sway of the Dogme school. So Traffic is replete with hand-held shots and jerky jump-cuts even in
the middle of the most banal conversations. The result may not be as
irritatingly slick as his overrated Out
of Sight (1998), but it still grates unnecessarily.
The Soderbergh I prefer – expressed in films like King of the Hill (1993) and Erin Brokovich (1999) – places more trust in the inherent qualities of the actors and the story. Not all of this talent has deserted him here: what makes the film enjoyable is the space he gives to such fine performers as Del Toro and Milian. With Del Toro, especially, one senses a gravity in the character that extends beyond the occasionally facile moves of the script. MORE Soderbergh: Full Frontal, The Limey, Ocean's Eleven, Solaris, Fallen Angels, The Underneath, The Knick, High Flying Bird © Adrian Martin March 2001 |
