Rented Traffic the other weekend, fully prepared to appreciate and respect it as a film.
I have to confess, I don’t get what all the fuss is about.
My criteria for a good movie includes interesting characters and a strong plot.
Traffic had neither.
The plot was a mish mash of drug-related situations, connected most often by characters passing each other on the street by purest chance.
Michael Douglas’s character was silly. His acceptance speech (or non-speech) at the end was patently absurd, and his ludricous line at the narcotics anonymous meeting–“We’re here to listen”–made me want to barf. As if listening to their wretched daughter from now on would solve her drug problem.
And the daughter. Her descent into drug addiction was so over-the-top, just designed to scare indulgent baby boomers in the audience with the prospect of how quickly their spoiled children could turn on them, becoming rapacious coke zombies and street hos.
Yes, Benicio Del Torro was awesomely authentic. I love the guy’s acting, in most everything I’ve seen of his. But did his character – uhm – do anything?
Don’t get me started on Catherine Zeta-Jones. Ludricous casting.
This movie was almost as insulting as Erin Brockovich, which, not coincidentally, was made by the same guy…
The three subplots of “Traffic” varied in quality. Benicio del Toro was terrific (as was his story). Catherine Zeta-Jones was interesting, too. Michael Douglas worked, though I can see how it may have been hard to suspend disbelief. And the Don Cheadle plot was absolutely terrible – these had to be the worst cops since Keystone.
One good point of the film, though, was its refusal to find any solution to the problem.
First, that my wife was asleep and her snoring was bothering the entire theater.
The whole “kill-the-informant-before-he-testifies” is a lazy cliche.
Finally, I’d heard this story before . . . in Glenn Frye’s “Smuggler’s Blues”.
It had its good side; Benicio del Toro deserved his Oscar, and I enjoyed the style that Soderbergh brought to the tale. But all in all, this doesn’t rank with his best–“Out of Sight” and “The Limey”, to name just two recent ones.
At least there were no pat answers or bullshit resolutions in it.
I appreciated that fact that, at the end of the film, very little had changed or been “solved.” The drug lord remained free, living in his beautiful home with his beautiful wife and their (presumably) beautiful children; most of the cops are still corrupt; no real progress has been made. Ok, sure, maybe one little girl stays sober, but who really cares?
I can’t stand sugar-coated bullshit, so I liked the darker undertones of the movie.
And as far as the speed with which Little Miss Suburbia slid down the slope- happens a lot. Happened to me that way. But that’s not always the case. At least it didn’t look like Reefer Madness. Most addicts will agree, it’s in the way that you use it. Maybe she could have snorted for 20 years if it wasn’t for smoking that crack and later shooting up. Intravenous drug use does tend to speed up the problems.
Yeah, Zebra, the “drug education” outbursts were pretty offensive, especially the kid in the car with Michael Douglas out looking for his daughter. I wanted to slap the kid, along with the screenwriter. Absolutely ridiculous.
yeah, I understand that in real life people can slide down the slope into full-blown addiction very, very fast. I’ve seen it, and brushed against it, myself.
I don’t think that descent played in this movie very convincingly, is all. Maybe the actress wasn’t very good, but I didn’t believe in her, and I resented how obviously the script was trying to scare the hell out parents.
As I watched this movie, I was reminded that I don’t often see I to I with the critics. IMHO most “critically aclaimed” films don’t live up to the hype. (feel free to boo me, but I didn’t think American Beauty or Magnolia were deserving of the level of praise they got either) My rule of thumb is: if the critics ooh and ahh over it, it’s probably a decent film, but not spectacular. Obviously they’re looking for different things in a movie than I am- I rarely like the movies that get the Oscar for best picture, too.
They may have a point. Bill Paterson is quite good in it. It is the same story in a miniseries format (with some translation of nationalities - it’s a British production), running over twice as long as the movie, which allows complete development of all the parallel story tracks. It was also done without Hollywood influencing it.
That was the only part I really hated too. I think Michael Douglas says something reasonable like “How dare you bring my daughter to this sort of neighborhood?” and the kid starts spouting off AT GREAT LENGTH about how he’s racist against black people and this is the only way they can make money or something. What with the who now? I think by “this sort of neighborhood” he meant the kind that reeks of urine, is full of broken bottles and has hookers passed out in doorways. You could just as easily find a similar neighborhood full of white or Hispanic people. It’s like he tried to be preachy about two things in one rant, and couldn’t quite pull it off.
For the most part I thought it was really interesting though. It’s just something I’ve never thought about and was sort of fascinated by how everything played out. I usually hate Michael Douglas and actually liked him in this.
I did think the kids spending day and night getting bombed and never having their parents wonder where they were or what they were doing was sort of far fetched, but what do I know?
I think you missed the point of that speech. It was intended to be a ridiculous rant to show the kid as the smug, snotty know-it-all that he is. Douglas’ cold glare cuts him off mid-sentence and nicely illustrates his contempt for such platitudes. There’s a bit more depth there than you’re giving it credit for.
Overall, I liked the movie quite a bit. I found the daughter’s descent into addiction to be very believable and loved Del Torro’s character. The one real weakness was Zeta Jone’s very sketchy plot thread and underdeveloped character. I’m going to make a point of renting Traffik so I can make a comparison.
I thought it was ok. I wasn’t particularly blown away.
And the scene where Jones is screeching to the hit man to kill the guy was patently ridiculous for several reasons, not the least being that the killer was not invested enough in the outcome to lay his own life on the line like that, and killing the guy in front of a bunch of law enforcement guys with guns was guaranteed to get him killed. Perfectly ridiculous.
But if you are going to cast the part of a beaautiful, self-centered, gold-digging trophy bitch, I think CZJ is the perfect choice.
Personally, I was incredibly underwhelmed with this movie because I had just seen Requiem for a Dream a few days before. Love it or hate it, I think it did a much better job commenting on the effects of drugs.
EJsGirl, if you haven’t seen RfaD yet, see it. If you think Traffic had darker undertones…
How? Requiem portrayed the effects of drugs in an absurd a one-sided manner reminiscent of Reefer Madness. Traffic’s whole point was to have an even-handed objective angle to it, allowing the viewer to make a judgement as opposed to being preached at, or shocked by the base filmaking of Requiem for a Dream.
How? Requiem portrayed the effects of drugs in an absurd a one-sided manner reminiscent of Reefer Madness. Traffic’s whole point was to have an even-handed objective angle to it, allowing the viewer to make a judgement as opposed to being preached at, or shocked by the base filmaking of Requiem for a Dream.
For one, the cinematography that everyone was getting so worked up about is anything but new or sophisticated. I mean come on, you use an orange filter in Mexico and a blue one in suburbia and you get an Oscar? Looked like a movie put together by a kid that just got his first copy of Final Cut 2. Far to many filters and various post-production gimmicks that serve no purpose than to call attention to themselves.
So many of the scenes were didactic. There were far too many explainations. Film is first and formost a visual media. The best films are the ones that rely the least on dialogue. Dialoguse, so to speak, is a weak element in film. There were far too many times that characters right out gave speeches. This is not good filmmaking. You shouldn’t have to tell us.
And there is one scene that really got my goat. I really was deeply offended by the scene where the young girl is having sex with the black man for drugs. The very images on the screen neutralize any meaning that there might have been behind it…it still says “drugs will make your virginal white women fall pray to viril black bucks”. Despite what Traffic might think that it is saying about drugs, that is what we see and in film seeing is believeing no matter how they might use dialogue to explain it away. It is the same concept as “Birth of a Nation” 100 years ago and frankly I am sick of seeing that kind of crap on screen.
I too hated this film (although for admitedly more shallow reasons than the ones even sven gave). This is probably the first instance in which I have seen a movie that was three hours long and yet I can’t seem to remember more than a minutes worth of what happened. It just seemed like Soderbergh was thinking he could make a movie about a political issue that’s been losing steam, throw in some “innovative” cinematography, pump it up to three hours (the unofficial minimum running time of critically acclaimed films), and presto! Instant Oscar whore!
Also, I was wondering if anyone could help me figure something out. Everybody who saw this movie absolutley LOVED Benicio del Toro’s performance. I didn’t think it was that special at all. Did I miss something? Is the fact that I can’t speak Spanish keeping me from loving a supposedly incredible acting job? And if so, why is it that I thought the actors in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon were wonderful, even though A) I can’t speak a word of Mandarin, and B) Overseas critics panned the actors of CTHD because they were “deadpan?”
Yeah, that sex scene between the girl and the dealer really bugged the hell out of me, too (and not in a good way), but I hadn’t been able to peg exactly why. You nailed it, even sven.
I agree. Although I did think that Catherine Zeta-Jones set her husband up at the end, after getting a taste of the power and wanting control over things. Again, the boss may change but nothing is really wrapped up in the end.