An Analysis of Traffic The bleached red sun has just gone down, the sky is left with a stain of light that emanates over the Mexican landscape. Javier Rodriguez Rodriguez looks up and ponders the past: a friend's death, the fall of a powerful drug cartel, and a victory that only swallows so much of the incurable problem, drugs, illustrated magnificently in the movie Traffic. Based on a British mini series, the film tells several stories dealing with drugs, those who use them, sell them, and try to stop them. In Mexico a sharp police officer, Rodriguez (Benicio Del Toro), and his partner find that they must play a political game with one drug dealer in order to rid themselves of another (Goldberger). In the U.S. a newly selected drug czar, Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas), begins to learn about the scope and depth of America's drug problem while his 16-year-old daughter succumbs to it, developing a severe addiction to cocaine and heroin.
English: A National Police OV-10 plane sprays herb...
A field of opium poppies in Burma.
CIA Map of International drug pipelinesAt the same time, two police officers operating in San Diego, California arrest a major drug dealer named Carlos Ayala, and his innocent, unsuspecting wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is suddenly thrust into the middle of the drug trade, forced to protect her husband's interests. Working with an 2 ensemble cast, director Steven Soderbergh bounces his story and cast from one location to the other (Tijuana, Ohio, Washington, D.C., California, Illinois) in order to convey the pervasiveness of drug culture and trafficking in North America.
Traffic is a superbly filmed story about how the illegal drug trade poses the sort of questions that could cross one's mind. How can we free civilization from the stronghold of the drug cartels? And what should we do to protect our children from this prevailing menace? In turn, we speculate in frustration, could...