Traffic **** (2000, Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta Jones, Benicio Del Toro) – Classic Movie Review 710

Director Steven Soderbergh’s scalding, four-Oscar-winning 2000 thriller casts Michael Douglas and his then new wife Catherine Zeta Jones together for the first time (though, alas, they share no scenes). This nail-biting, epic thriller is great, intelligent entertainment, with something thoughtful to say, including a searing anti-drugs message.

Douglas lands another ideal role as Robert Wakefield, a conservative Supreme Court judge appointed by the US President to head America’s escalating war on narcotics, who discovers that his teenage honours student daughter Caroline (Erika Christensen) is a heroin addict. Meanwhile, US drug agents Don Cheadle and Luis Guzman are on the trail of Zeta Jones, as the greedy crooked wife of a jailed kingpin (Steven Bauer). And South of the Border, duplicitous police officer Javier Rodriguez (Benicio Del Toro, who is superb) is recruited to fight the war on a drugs cartel.

The film’s three yarns weave together seamlessly in a brio display of film-making and script-writing (by Stephen Gaghan, based on the British Channel 4 TV miniseries Traffik by Simon Moore). Some aspects of the story are based on real people and events.

Edgy, intelligent and exciting, always looked a strong candidate for Academy Awards night. It won four Oscars: for Best Supporting Actor (Del Toro), Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay for Gaghan and Best Film Editing for Stephen Mirrione.

Soderbergh operates the camera himself as his own cinematographer and adopts a distinctive cinematography tint for each story so audiences can tell them apart.

Dennis Quaid, Topher Grace, James Brolin, Albert Finney, Amy Irving, Miguel Ferrer, Jacob Vargas, Andrew Chavez, Michael Saucedo, Tomas Milian, Jose Yenque, Michael O’Neill, Russell G Jones, Lorene Hetherington, Eric Collins, Beau Holden, Rick Abert and D W Moffett also appear.

Original backers 20th Century Fox wanted Harrison Ford as star and changes to the screenplay. Other Hollywood studios rejected it because of the three-hour running time and the subject matter. USA Films were up for it, and upped the budget too. And it paid off for them nicely when it was a hit, with a worldwide box-office revenue total of $207million on a $46million budget.

In 2004 USA Network ran another miniseries, also called Traffic, based on the 2000 movie and the British TV series.

(C) Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 710

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more film reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/