What a relief. Traffic is a movie with a mission, not a message, showcasing actors with a purpose, not an image-shaping agenda.
Directing Traffic is Steven Soderbergh, a filmmaker who had forgotten what made him unique.
What a relief, he remembered what it was.
That would be the astute blender of substance and style so remarkably framed in his calling-card introduction, sex, lies and videotape, and hinted at with his overlooked Out Of Sight.
Sex and deception isn't the theme this time. Drugs and deception is.
Traffic, based on the 1990 Brit TV miniseries, contains three interwoven Stephen Gaghan stories, cut together with a deft and detailed edge, all dealing with the cocaine drug trade.
One features Michael Douglas. He plays a state supreme court justice and Washington opportunist who accepts a position as the country's anti-drug czar.
Another story showcases Benicio Del Toro portraying a Mexican cop trying to do the right thing when all the wrong things seem to get done around him.
The third vignette belongs to Douglas' wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones. She's a drug lord's wife living her lie in the San Diego suburbs.
Soderbergh, unlike his characters, makes his Traffic intentions clear from the start.
He opens with the Mexican side of things framed, by cinematographer Soderbergh, in a jumpy cinema verite sun-burned collage of action and confrontation.
The Douglas portion, more familiar and more tranquil and controlled by comparison, is passive-aggressive in defining the politics of drug policing.
The San Diego portions, golden and light but deceivingly dangerous, are somewhere in between.
What all three segments contain is a remarkably compelling urgency defining right and wrong and the mostly grey area in between.
Soderbergh, who directed the more mainstream Erin Brockovich earlier this year, maintains the double-time thriller pulse almost seamlessly.
Douglas is elegant in his steady portrayal of the politico who comes to realize his drug crisis is closer to home than he realizes. Zeta-Jones is flawless as the shocked San Diego housewife who recovers with an alarming transition.
Del Toro, the hero, is astoundingly at ease in his role of the Mexican cop, who is seemingly alone in the war against the mighty, all-powerful, all-corrupting cartels.
Aiding and abetting Soderbergh in co-starring portrayals are Dennis Quaid as a sleazy San Diego drug lawyer, Don Cheadle smartly defining a surveillance agent, and Erika Christensen who shines as the drugged-up daughter of the anti-drug czar.
So maybe you get an anti-drug lecture now and again. So maybe you deserve one.
What you won't get is Soderbergh pretending to offer easy solutions at the end of this harrowing, sometimes agonizing adventure.
One thing is guaranteed besides a slew of Oscar nominations. You won't take the drug problem lightly again.
Soderbergh doesn't offer that luxury during a film which is sometimes hard to take, but difficult to shake after you've seen it.
(This film is rated AA)
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