My husband finds it too depressing, so I watched "Traffic" by myself last night. It is a downer, but beautifully crafted and acted, with a Shakespearean tragedy tone. The colorization alone is gorgeous, and the movie has something to say. No answers, but something powerful to say about the way we drag Mexico down and they drag us down, over drugs. Each story is poignant and feels truthful. The cast is phenomenal: Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Don Cheadle, Luis Guzman, Dennis Quaid, Albert Finney, and many more fine actors getting their frisson going. Benicio del Toro won the best supporting actor Oscar for his role as a Mexican cop struggling to stop the carnage.
Does it help to lay out the true state of the drug war? Maybe not, but Director Steven Soderbergh tried, and his film is an elegy to those who died or are crushed in this quagmire. Clearly, nothing has changed since 2000, when the film came out. Kids still find it easier to get drugs than alcohol, no job can compete with the bucks to be made by drug dealing, the various administrations in Washington, D.C. pay lip service and have a show of force, but cannot control the flow of drugs. Mexico is being crushed under the cartels' violence, and well meaning, ordinary families are losing their members to death and destruction.
I personally adore Don Cheadle, and he is great in this film, hoping against hope he can make a difference, with all the odds stacked against him as a DEA agent. Douglas is similarly distinguished as a judge who accepts the position of drug Czar and finds the war in his own home. Zeta-Jones is fiery and truthful as a Lady Macbeth determined to keep her extravagant lifestyle no matter what she has to do. Erica Christensen is amazing as a teenager lost in drugs. And yes, Del Toro deserved the Oscar. I haven't seen him since, but the quality of his work in this film is superior.
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