Verdict: Impressively vast canvas portrait of the futile war on drugs, though lacking anything new on the subject.

Details: Starring Michael Douglas. Rated R for language, violence, teen drug use and sex. Two hours, 27 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: Hollywood has so conditioned us to stories with upbeat, tidy endings, that a movie like Steven Soderbergh's Traffic is a startling anomaly. Its subject is the overwhelming futility of the so-called war on drugs, a no-win battle in which there are no heroes and precious few good guys. Rather than offering easy answers, it suggests that we are in so far over our heads trying to stem the flow of cocaine that we are not even asking the right questions.

Based on a British television miniseries, Traffic paints its gloomy picture across a vast panoramic canvas, with three distinct parallel plots, more than a hundred characters, and a narrative that ricochets from Mexico to Cincinnati to San Diego to Washington, D.C.

Although much about Traffic impresses, its considerable reach is marred by some cliched story threads. The film really doesn't live up to its enormous hype, including its puzzling selection as best picture of the year by the New York Film Critics Circle. With its self-conscious visual style, thanks to Soderbergh's own cinematography under the pseudonym Peter Andrews, and its bloated length, there are enough flaws to temper a recommendation.

Yet there also are some remarkable gritty sequences that set Traffic apart from other films on the topic.

Though it is inappropriately artsy for a movie that wants to be seen as a pseudo-documentary, the three stories are shot in their own color schemes. In a bleached out medley of browns, lowly Mexican policeman Javier Rodriguez (Benicio Del Toro) tries his best to prevent drugs from moving across the border, gets recognized and recruited by a corrupt general and begins sinking in a morass of moral quandaries.

Meanwhile, in blue hues, tough-on-criminals Ohio Supreme Court Justice Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas) is named the nation's drug czar, only to find that his 16-year-old daughter Caroline (Erika Christensen) is hooked on freebasing coke.

And in San Diego, in balanced, saturated colors, a pair of hard-working cops (Don Cheadle, Luis Guzman) bust a mid-level drug dealer (Miguel Ferrer), who negotiates immunity by naming and testifying against those higher up the chain. Left to cope when her seemingly responsible husband is arrested, pregnant and clueless housewife Helena Ayala (Catherine Zeta-Jones) learns to immerse herself in the family drugs-and-death business.

Every strata of the supply and demand cycle gets covered, and the screenplay by Stephen Gaghan (Rules of Engagement) depicts some genuinely wrenching human drama. But at the end of the movie's two-and-a-half hours, it adds up to little new information for those who read a paper regularly or are familiar with any of several urban contemporary television police series. Still, Traffic is several steps above the slick, easy answers of the good guys and good push-up bra victory in Soderbergh's Erin Brockovich, released last year. Just on a sheer logistical level, this is remarkable work, even if it feels like breadth has triumphed over depth.

Even on a screen crowded with short, choppy scenes, Soderbergh gets numerous vivid performances. Foremost is Del Toro, through whose eyes we see the corruption and confusion of Mexican justice. Cheadle, his American counterpoint, etches a memorable portrait of a man realizing his life's work has been futile. Douglas adds some star power as the drug czar, with his jut-jawed determination and a little of his crazed Everyman from Falling Down. But he gets no scenes with new wife Zeta-Jones, who ably goes from country club dilettante to godmother in several uneasy steps.

Traffic salts the rest of the film with brief cameos of such familiar faces as Albert Finney, James Brolin and Benjamin Bratt. And C-SPAN watchers will probably enjoy the gimmicky cocktail party in which Judge Wakefield meets official Washington, featuring the likes of Orrin Hatch, Barbara Boxer and Charles Grassley.

Traffic is worth seeing, but lower your expectations a few notches and go for the epic filmmaking, not for new insights into the drug control and containment debacle.

— Hap Erstein, Cox News Service