TRAFFIC

While lacking both the texture and scope of the Channel Four series which inspired it, Stephen Soderbergh's Traffic is an accomplished and intelligent, if flawed examination of the insidious nature of the contemporary drug-trade and America's escalating war on the same.

Using three loosely interwoven narrative strands, Traffic opens in Tijuana, Mexico, home of the most powerful drug-cartels on the planet since the good old US of A eliminated the Colombian competition. Honest Mexican cop Javier (Del Toro) works a border area together with his partner and mate Manolo. When they become involved with General Salazar, head of the anti-narcotics unit, it's quickly apparent that the Mexican military have certain vested interests when it comes to their suspects, particularly known drug lord El Scorpion.

Back in Ohio, state Supreme Court-Justice Wakefield (Douglas) has just been appointed Anti-Drug Tzar by Washington. While out on the front-lines examining the enormous scope of America's cocaine problem and discussing policy at political cocktail parties, it transpires that the drug problem has hit closer to home than the new drug-tzar could have possibly envisaged - his only daughter Caroline and all her fellow preppy-bourgeois brats while away their time at coke-snorting sessions.

Meanwhile in San Diego, under-cover DEA agents Montel Gordon (Cheadle) and Ray Castro (Guzman) are in overdrive trying to quash the Stateside influence of the notorious Obregon-brothers cartel. They hit the jackpot when a mid-level drugs trafficker turns informant against wealthy drug baron Carlos Ayala - when Carlos is arrested, his pregnant missus Helena (Zeta-Jones) is shocked to discover from family friend and lawyer Arnie (Quaid) that her comfortable trophy-wife and soccer-mom status (replete with high-society respectability) is in fact built on large-scale cocaine dealing. As her husband's Mexican associates call in their debts, and her upscale affluent lifestyle comes under threat, she is forced to take desperate measures to provide for herself and her family, and becomes a drug dealer.

Traffic's respective vignettes are masterfully woven together, and the script can be immensely clever in delivering its message without coming on like a latter-day Reefer Madness. However, the film suffers from an US-and-them mentality when dealing with those born south of the border. Even the respectable successful businessman at the upper end of the operation is of Mexican extraction, and the never-ending parade of sleazy Tijuana assassins and scumbag dealers can hardly be said to be counteracted by the film's inclusion of one token honest Mexican.

Stylistically, Soderbergh has described this as a $48 million Dogme movie, but his hand-held NYPD Blue-inspired antics become a little over-stretched, if not redundant, over Traffic's two and one half hour duration.

The most unforgivable flaw of all, though, is the tacked-on Hollywood happy-ever-after ending which ensures that the good guys all end well, while for the bad guys come-uppance is nigh. It's a very forced and conventional conclusion for a multi-layered film which, until that point, had successfully maintained the stance "we are losing this war against drugs".