Plot: What’s it about?
In the latter part of the 90s, Steven Soderbergh was on the brink of a big directorial comeback. With “Out Of Sight” he showed he can bring justice to Elmore Leonard, not to mention give some credibility to George Clooney as a risk-taking lead and in return got some Oscar notice. In “The Limey”, Soderbergh gave direction to an Oscar-worthy performance by Terence Stamp and gave a short and sweet revenge tale a credible look with an editing technique that made it one of the best edited I’ve ever seen and even though the movie got no Oscar nominations, it made for one of the best DVD commentaries ever. As the start of the 21st century, Soderbergh had two solid films in the can that made an impact at the nominating time when it counted the most. With “Erin Brockovich”, Soderbergh guided Julia Roberts to her first Oscar win. His second release that year, released in the fourth quarter, would take an edge with a big cast and geared him towards achieving a feat that had not been accomplished for years in Oscar history. The second film is “Traffic” and helped Soderbergh get two Oscar nominations in the Director category and, ironially, won him the Best Director award when it could’ve cancelled himself out. Despite the nominations, “Traffic” is an intriguing tale of drugs, corruption and realization all woven in a web of 3 tales all connected.
Once upon a time, a Mexican cop (Benicio Del Toro) and his parter pull over a suspicious truck. The contents are boxes with a scorpion stamped outside it. When the cop pulls away with the truck, a streak of multiple trucks follows the cop leading him to the Mexican czar of the drug underworld (Tomas Milian). Meanwhile, in the states, Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas) have been appointed by the President to fight the ongoing drug problem in the country, while at home his daughter (Erika Christensen) is got a drug problem of her own. At the same time, two DEA agents (Don Cheadle and Luis Guzman) are undercover ready to take down a drug kingpin (Steven Bauer) married to a pregnant wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones) who is unaware of what he does on the side and suffering the consequences as a result of her lack of her husband’s knowledge.
All three storylines are filmed differently and all three work. The performances fit each storyline. Benicio Del Toro plays a cop conflicted on taking sides where there are no sides to take. Michael Douglas plays the American czar conflicted in taking a position that takes him away from his normal family routine and suffers with an addicted daughter and goes to all means to find a solution for her. Catherine Zeta-Jones plays a wife conflicted with learning who her husband really is and goes to what means to survive in the rough situation that her husband has left her with. The rest of the cast, including Cheadle, Guzman, Dennis Quaid as a crafty lawyer and Miguel Ferrer as part of the kingpin’s food chain give great support.
The film shows from both sides and never comes with a knot tying solution and shows that this is an ongoing problem and the more things change, the more things stay the same. There are no heroes and no solutions and there never is a packaged ending but what it does is it takes the realism of the situation and doesn’t get preachy and makes for an extremely entertaning and visually striking piece that doesn’t struggle in pace like the characters.
Video: How does it look?
“Traffic” is to be digitally remastered in this “new” 1.85:1 transfer but judging from this and the previous studio transfer, the picture quality remains the same. The Mexican scenes are drenched with little grain and the Douglas chapter is tinted in blue hues while the Don Chedle/Catherine Zeta-Jones segment is in a shadowy color palette where it’s not totally clear but all imperfections are the intention and do distinguish from each segment even when they do connect. Despite it all, a very good transfer with it’s flawed balance and it’s intended gritty look.
Audio: How does it sound?
As mentioned in the commentary with Soderbergh and Gaghan, the entire film is presented in a mono track. Most of the sound comes from the front channels and the dialogue and action sequences along with the score are well balanced and makes for a good track all the way throughout. This film also has English subtitles along with a DDS 2.0 track.
Supplements: What are the extras?
Being a recent Criterion title, Traffic is an extra heavy two-disc title. On Disc One, there are 3 commentaries. The first, with Steven Soderbergh and writer Stephen Gaghan, is extremely informative and is on par with the majority of the previous Soderbergh track having great anecdotes about the production and I was glad more was spoken of the possible involvement of Harrison Ford that resulted in the casting of Michael Douglas. The second, with producers Laura Bickford, Marshall Herskovitz, Edward Zwick and consultants Tim Golden and Craig Chretien, mentions more in the involvement connecting the miniseries along with the casting and the authenticity of the procedures in the film. The last is with composer Cliff Martinez and it outlines what steps he took to come up with the score of the film with it’s cues as well as speaking of his involvement with Soderbergh through a few projects while the music is not playing in the film. In addition thre is a isolated score and an alternate cue with a description by Martinez. All three are great commentaries.
In disc two, there are twenty-eight deleted scenes w/optional commentary by Soderbergh and Gaghan. Their comments are intriguing why they were cut out and some work better than most. The majority of them involve Catherine Zeta-Jones and would’ve brought some reason to her character had it been included in the finished film. It would’ve been quite a long final cut with all those scenes.
Next is a fascinating area called Demonstrations going into the editing end of the film, how they came to the imperfections of the film as well as showing how you can make your own version of a scene. It reminded me a little of the same option on the “Die Hard” DVD and it’s a good area to venture.
Also, there’s more raw footage in Additional Footage which goes through different angles to four scenes and you can make your choice of which viewpoint to see via the angle option on your remote. It is amazing and it’s great to multi-angle all scenes to make for an intriguing cut of the film.
Finally, there are the teaser and theatrical trailers of the film along with five T.V. spots and Trading Cards of the trained dog unit of the DEA and all their accomplishments.
The Criterion Collection has a fine addition with Traffic and it’ll be interesting to see which near-future releases of recent films will be included.
