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[ VIDEO REVIEW: Traffic ] Mike Warren In
any case, Traffic takes a dramatic look at this ‘War', but the stance
of the movie is in many ways hard to determine. If Traffic was a
documentary, this would be an excellent thing. Unfortunately, it is not, and
this lack of feeling comes through, ultimately making the movie seem rather
cold and austere. The blue filters don't help this, either. Many
of the characters in the film are punished for going against the War; Eduardo
Ruiz is at first spared any jail time whatsoever for agreeing to cooperate
with federal agents (not really surprising) but later on, he vents himself by
basically outlining the problems with the War on Drugs (i.e. the supply is
not to blame; the demand is) and calling the agents' careers irrelevant and
useless. Moments later, he is killed. Javier
Rodiriguez Rodiriguez (played extremely well by Benicio Del Toro) is,
throughout the film, rewarded for his efforts at bringing down Mexican drug
producers and their henchmen. His final reward comes from helping DEA agents.
(Apparently a reasonably common practice is for US agents to pay Mexican drug
cartel insiders.) Again, if this was documentary, one might forgive the
director. It is, however, drama and these rewards further the audience's
impression that the movie is pro-Drug War. In
it's favour, Traffic does have characters who ultimately don't like
the War. ‘Drug Tsar' Robert Wakefield
(a character who Michael Douglas puts in a solid performance for) doesn't get
his daughter back until he realizes the real reason for her addiction. Kudos.
Also, the film does a decent job of showing some of the problems (deaths,
torn families) that the War results in. There are also off-hand jabs made at
the hypocrisy of allowing certain damaging drugs like alcohol to be sold
legally. These do not, however, seem to make up for all the pro-Drug-War
thoughts (although the film certainly appears to think some of the War's
methods are misguided). Most
of the cinematography is decent, but there was definitely overuse of filters;
every single Mexican shot was yellow-filtered, over-exposed, grainy and
hand-held. Almost every Drug Tsar shot was blue-filtered with a slow-moving
Steadi-cam. Is this really necessary? Also, a lot of the action sequences
were far too reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan in their shakiness and
were very hard to follow. The
soundtrack fits pretty well, and there were no glaring acting problems.
Despite my problems with the apparent message of the film (and, at times,
it's very slow pace), Traffic is a solid movie and worth seeing.
©
Copyright 1999-2001 Mike Warren (mike-warren.com). This content may be
reproduced verbatim in any medium provided this copyright notice and all
content remains unchanged. |
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