Traffic (2000)
Average Rating: 8/10
Reviews Counted: 156
Fresh: 143 | Rotten: 13
Soderbergh successfully pulls off the highly ambitious Traffic, a movie with three different stories and a very large cast. The issues of ethics are gray rather than black-and-white, with no clear-cut good guys. Terrific acting all around.
Average Rating: 7.8/10
Critic Reviews: 41
Fresh: 38 | Rotten: 3
Soderbergh successfully pulls off the highly ambitious Traffic, a movie with three different stories and a very large cast. The issues of ethics are gray rather than black-and-white, with no clear-cut good guys. Terrific acting all around.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 187,260
Movie Info
Described by director Steven Soderbergh as "Nashville meets The French Connection," this multi-character drama explores the effects of international drug trafficking on all fronts: from their source, to the U.S. border, to the federal government, to the private lives of users. Based upon a miniseries originally aired on Britain's Channel 4, Traffic divides its time among three main storylines and almost a dozen locales. The first and primary plot thread, set in Ohio and Washington, D.C.,
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Cast
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Michael Douglas
Robert Wakefield -
Don Cheadle
Montel Gordon -
Benicio Del Toro
Javier Rodriguez -
Luis Guzman
Ray Castro -
Dennis Quaid
Arnie Metzger -
Catherine Zeta-Jones
Helena Ayala -
Steven Bauer
Carlos Ayala -
Benjamin Bratt
Juan Obregon -
James Brolin
Ralph Landry -
Erika Christensen
Caroline Wakefield -
Clifton Collins Jr.
Francisco Flores -
Miguel Ferrer
Eduardo Ruiz -
Albert Finney
Chief of Staff -
Topher Grace
Seth Abrahms -
Amy Irving
Barbara Wakefield -
Tomas Milian
Arturo Salazar -
D.W. Moffett
Jeff Sheridan -
Marisol Padilla Sanc...
Ana Sanchez -
Peter Riegert
Attorney Michael Adl... -
Jacob Vargas
Manolo Sanchez -
Rena Sofer
Helena's Friend -
Mario Roberts
DEA Agent (Public St... -
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Traffic Trailer & Photos
All Critics (160) | Top Critics (42) | Fresh (143) | Rotten (13) | DVD (41)
I don't see this slightly better-than-average drug thriller, with slightly better-than-average direction by Steven Soderbergh, as anything more than a routine rubber-stamping of genre reflexes.
Top CriticThe promise of Sex, Lies, and Videotape has been fulfilled.
It's wise about different kinds of addiction and concepts of family, about the folly, futility and hypocrisy of anti-drug 'wars', and about the awful human cost of it all. And it grips like a vice from start to end.
Director Steven Soderbergh is riding one of the hottest streaks in the movie world.
Soderbergh's jazzed stylistics can be smartly entertaining. Without them, an uneven movie like Traffic might seem more of a mélange than it already is.
It leaves one feeling restless and dissatisfied.
It is such a complex film yet artfully done in such a way that you cannot help but sit back and admire it.
A little masterpiece, at best, but for any other filmmaker, this would be a career highlight, while it's also easy to see how most other filmmakers would turn it into a dull, obvious harangue.
In terms of modern films, it kicked off a whole list of issue-related multi-character dramas like Syriana, Crash, and Babel -- and it may be the best of all of them, even if some of its stories are stronger than others.
A fascinating look at how we're winning and losing the "war" on drugs.
Tons of drug use, violence, and depressing stories.
"Traffic" leaps into growing gorges between profit and principle and, from a law perspective, questions the sanity of ramming heads into walls of cocaine bricks. It remains one of the Zeroes' preeminent epics even after policy cinema's shift to terrorism.
The whole movie, though very realistic and documentary style, seemed to be directed by an amateur.
Soderbergh uses a handheld camera to saturate the film, which he describes as Nashville meets The French Connection, with compelling, docudramatic urgency.
Le film de Steven Soderbergh et Stephen Gaghan est visiblement le fruit d'un travail de recherche exhaustif et d'une démarche narrative tout aussi réfléchie et cohérente.
Intelligent and highly thought-provoking.
Traffic is one of those square-up-the-middle tracts that make people think they're thinking.
Mr. Soderburgh never insults or spoon-feeds his audience. His camera only documents and observes what's out there. And with a subject like this, that can be the most effective technique.
By Hollywood standards, this is a decently written, well-made social problem picture, but it's not nearly as harsh, critical and effective as Traffik, the 5-hour British mini-series upon which Gaghan's script is based.
Overrated... but worth seeing.
You may agree with its message, and be impressed by the camerawork. But this movie is stretched too thin and eventually asks us to accept some pretty ludicrous twists.
This close dissection of the arguably inneffectual drug war being fought by the US government is so complex, so intricate, that I am surprised that the film has met with commercial success.
One of the best movies of the year: a gripping, intelligent and ambitious drama about drug trafficking and the misguided war against it.
Audience Reviews for Traffic
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Movies Like Traffic
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- Javier Rodriguez: I had that dream again.
- Manolo Sanchez: Which one?
- Javier Rodriguez: Where my mother's suffocating.
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- Robert Wakefield: If there is a war on drugs, then many of our family members are the enemy. And I don't know how you wage war on your own family.
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- Robert Wakefield: Look, we need to take down either of these cartels: either Juarez or Tijuana. Not because they're a symbol but... hell, they are a symbol! But because we need to send a message! When Carlos Ayala hires Michael Addler as his legal defense, I send Ben Williams down to San Diego as a prosecutor, why? Because it's a symbol. It's a symbol that we are sending the best! It's a message that we're going after their top guys.
Discussion Forum
| Topic | Last Post | Replies |
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| Unexplained Plot Developments | 2 months ago | 0 |
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Foreign Titles
- Traffic (DE)
- Traffic (2000) (CA)
