Traffic (2000 film)

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Traffic
IMDB 7.8/10
Directed by	Steven Soderbergh
Produced by	Edward Zwick Marshall Herskovitz Laura Bickford
Written by	Stephen Gaghan
Starring	Michael Douglas Benicio Del Toro Don Cheadle Catherine Zeta-Jones Dennis Quaid
Music by	Cliff Martinez
Distributed by	USA Films
Release date(s)	December 27, 2000
Running time	147 min.
Country	USA
Language	English Spanish
Budget	$48,000,000 (estimated)
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Traffic is a four-time Academy Award-winning and Golden Globe Award-winning 2000 crime / drama film directed by Steven Soderbergh that explores the intricacies of the illegal drug trade from a number of perspectives: user, enforcer, politician and trafficker. The film is a shorter adaptation of the British Channel 4 television series Traffik; the Pakistani plotline of the miniseries was replaced with the Mexican plotline in the film. In 2004, USA Network ran a miniseries—also called Traffic—based on the movie.

The film Traffic is generally regarded as the first hyperlink movie, where multiple stories take place, each affecting the other in ways that that characters are unaware of, all the while using radically different aesthetic and cinematics techniques to define the mise en scène of each of the story lines.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Awards won 3 Principal Supporting Cast 4 Trivia 5 External links

[edit] Plot

The film begins in Mexico, where police officer Javier Rodriguez (Benicio Del Toro) and his partner, Manolo, stop a drug transport and arrest the couriers. Their arrest is interrupted by General Salazar, a high-ranking Mexican official. The general, who announces he wants to "wipe out the Tijuana cartel," decides to hire Javier, a rare honest cop in Mexico. Javier is instructed to locate and apprehend Frankie Flowers (Clifton Collins Jr.) - a notorius hit man for the Tijuana Óbregon Drug Cartel.

Meanwhile, Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas), a conservative Ohio Judge, is appointed to be head of the President's Office of National Drug Control, taking the title of Drug Czar. Unbeknowst to Robert, his honor student daughter who lives in the Cincinnati suburbs, Caroline (Erika Christensen), falls victim to drug addiction when she is introduced to heroin by her friend, Seth (Topher Grace). She and Seth are arrested when another student at her high school overdoses on cocaine and they try to dump him anonymously at a nearby hospital.

In the third main story, which is set in San Diego, an undercover DEA investigation - led by Montel Gordon (Don Cheadle) - arrests the high-stakes drug dealer Eduardo Ruiz (Miguel Ferrer) and begins an interrogation. Ruiz decides to risk the dangerous road to immunity by ratting out his boss: drug lord Carlos Ayala (Steven Bauer), the biggest distributor for the Óbregon brothers in the U.S.

Javier is successful in finding Flowers, by secretly learning that he is a homosexual and frequents gay bars to pick up promiscuous men. Flowers is tortured horrifically, much to the uneasiness of straight-shooting Javier, and eventually gives Salazar the names of several important members of the Óbregon Drug Cartel, who are arrested in a large effort by police and army soldiers. Javier and Salazar's efforts start to cripple the Óbregon brothers cocaine outfit, but Javier soon discovers that Salazar is, in fact, a pawn for the Juaréz Cartel, the rival of the Óbregon brothers. The entire Mexican anti-drug campaign is a fraud, as Salazar is wiping out one cartel, not out of duty, but rather because he has aligned himself with another cartel for profit.

Robert, realizing that his daughter is a drug addict, finds himself in a tough spot, caught between his demanding new position and his worrisome family life. He delves into his job, and heads to Mexico to see the "front lines up close." He is encouraged by the successful efforts of Salazar hurting the Óbregon brothers (not knowing of the general's ruse and secret motivation), but is frustrated at his team's lack of new ideas on how to fight drug trafficking or stop users from using. When he returns to Ohio, Robert learns that his efforts to see Caroline rehabilitated have failed, and she escaped into the city where no one knows her location. Secretly, she's forced to prostitute herself and rob her parents to procure money for drugs.

While the trial against Carlos Ayala begins, Carlos' wife, Helena (Catherine Zeta-Jones), who has only recently learned of his true profession, wants their family life to go on as always. She and her son are soon threatened by thugs of the Óbregon brothers. With her husband facing life imprisonment and death threats against her only child, she decides to make a desperate move and hire Flowers to assassinate Eduardo Ruiz. She knows that killing Ruiz will effectively end the trial.

Javier's partner, Manolo, who has also learned of General Salazar's lies, sells the information to the Óbregon drug cartel, but is killed for his betrayal. Javier, who can no longer stomach working for Salazar, decides to cut a deal with the only non-corrupt organization he has access to - the American Government and FBI. In exchange for his testimony, Javier requests electricity in his neighborhood, so that kids can play baseball at night rather than be tempted by street gangs and crime. General Salazar's secrets are revealed to the public; he is arrested and tortured to death shortly after.

Robert begins a search for his daughter, dragging along Seth, who fears they will be murdered for meddling in such dangerous business. After being threatened and nearly killed by a drug dealer, Robert regains his resolve and breaks into a seedy hotel room in Cincinnati, finding a semi-conscious Caroline about to prostitute herself to a much older man. Robert comforts her and breaks down in tears. He returns to Washington, D.C., to give his prepared speech on a "10-point plan" to combat the war on drugs. In the middle of the speech, he falters, then tells the press that on a war on drugs is a war against many of our own family members, which he cannot endorse. He quits his job and heads home, satisfied with his choice to quit.

Flowers's assassination attempt on Ruiz fails, when he himself is assassinated by a sniper working for the Óbregon brothers. Helena, knowing that Ruiz is soon to testify, then makes a deal with Juan Óbregon (Benjamin Bratt), lord of the drug cartel, who forgives the debt of the Ayala family and murders Ruiz. Carlos Ayala is released, much to the discomfort of Montel Gordon, who lost his friend and partner, Ray Castro (Luis Guzman), when Frankie tried to assassinate Ruiz with a car bomb. Soon after, Montel bursts into the Ayala residence and plants a microphone under one of the tables, before being kicked out.

Robert and his wife begin to go to Narcotics Anonymous meetings with their daughter, to support her and everyone else there.

Javier takes the media to Mexico and explains what he can about the widespread corruption in the police force and army. The film concludes with him watching some Mexican children playing baseball at night, at their new stadium.

[edit] Awards won

Academy Awards - Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (for Benicio Del Toro), Best Film Editing, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It was also nominated for Best Picture, but did not win.

Golden Globe Awards - Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture, Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay

Edgar Awards - Best Motion Picture Screenplay (for Stephen Gaghan)

Benicio Del Toro is one of only four actors to have won an Academy Award for a part spoken mainly in a foreign language (most of Del Toro's dialogue is in Spanish). Sophia Loren, Robert De Niro, and Roberto Benigni are the other three.

[edit] Principal Supporting Cast

• Dennis Quaid - Arnie Metzger, Ayala's Distribution Partner
• Steven Bauer - Carl Ayala, Drug Distributor
• Clifton Collins Jr.- Francisco Flores, Obregon Assassin
• Erika Christensen - Caroline Wakefield
• Topher Grace - Seth Abrahams
• Jacob Vargas - Manolo Sanchez, Tijuana Police and Javier Rodriguez's Partner
• Miguel Ferrer - Eduardo Ruiz, Obregon/Ayala Distributor
• Amy Irving - Barbara Wakefield
• Luis Guzmán - Ray Castro, DEA Agent and Montel Gordon's Partner
• D.W. Moffett - Jeff Sheridan, Assistant to Bob Wakefield at White House Office of National Drug Control Policy
• Tomas Milian - General Arturo Salazar, Head of Mexican Drug Police
• Peter Riegert - Michael Adler, Carl Ayala's Attorney
• Benjamin Bratt - Juan Obregon, Head of Obregon Drug Cartel
• James Brolin - General Ralph Landry, Outgoing head of Office of National Drug Control Policy
• Albert Finney - White House Chief of Staff
• Salma Hayek - Rosario

[edit] Trivia

• Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones were engaged during the filming of this movie, but did not appear in any scenes together in the film.
• At the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes and Directors Guild of America awards for 2000 Soderbergh was nominated at Best Director for this and Erin Brockovich.
• The role of Judge Wakefield was originally slated to star Harrison Ford, who pulled out of the film before production, and was replaced by Michael Douglas. Ford also turned down an opportunity to star in the 2005 film Syriana, also written by Stephan Gaghan. Ford said that these are the two film roles that he has most regretted ever turning down.
• Writer Stephen Gaghan originally planned to set the Wakefield family storylines in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. During his research, he determined that Cincinnati's bad neighborhoods looked worse than Louisville's and would serve the finished film better, so he moved the Wakefields' stories to Ohio. When a critic commented that it seemed unrealistic that the daughter's high school record was almost perfect when she was taking drugs, Gaghan pointed out that the high school record in the movie was his and that he had been abusing drugs at the time.

[edit] External links

• Traffic at the Internet Movie Database
• Traffic at Rotten Tomatoes
• Criterion Collection essay by Manohla Dargis
• Criterion Collection essay by Larry Blake

Films by Steven Soderbergh

sex, lies, and videotape (1989) | Kafka (1991) | King of the Hill (1993) | Underneath (1995) | Gray's Anatomy (1996) | Schizopolis (1996) | Out of Sight (1998) | The Limey (1999) | Erin Brockovich (2000) | Traffic (2000) | Ocean's Eleven (2001) | Full Frontal (2002) | Solaris (2002) | Eros (Equilibrium) (2004) | Ocean's Twelve (2004) | Bubble (2006) | The Good German (2006) | Guerrilla (2007) | Ocean's Thirteen (2007)