Traffic Reviews
Movie Mom at Yahoo! Movies
Despite a first-rate all-star cast, the stories never connect or illuminate.
| Original Score: 3/5
FilmsInReview.com
I was hard pressed to find any new insights into the world of drug trafficking.
eFilmCritic.com
Traffic is one of those square-up-the-middle tracts that make people think they're thinking.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Top CriticI 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.
Cinema Crazed
The whole movie, though very realistic and documentary style, seemed to be directed by an amateur.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
SPLICEDWire
This multi-narrative message-heavy epic is often ... busy peddling smug political proclamations and milking dubious (nee implausible) melodramatic ironies.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Ozus' World Movie Reviews
The film soft pedals any advocacy for legalizing drugs and offers no hard-hitting critique of current policies, except to say it doesn't work.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
Matinee Magazine
Resisting making a movie about characters instead of sweeping generalizations on the wide world of illegal drugs, [Soderbergh] fails to come up with a point.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
Traffic is a failure of a very high order -- a movie that takes a gutsy stand and displays real filmmaking savvy but simply isn't as exciting as it should be to watch.
San Diego Union-Tribune
Traffic has potent moments and that old reliable, a 'powerhouse cast,' but after about half of its 147 minutes the thought was nibbling on me: Why is this not cohering as a really major work?
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Both the film and the drug war are rife with moral ambiguity and contradictions that doom them to ultimate failure.
Sight and Sound
Although its vigorous, unjaded rush of imagery and story makes for an exciting visual experience, Steven Soderbergh's Traffic is in the end a fatally sober film about drugs.
The movie is powerful precisely because it doesn't preach.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
The narrative pallet of Traffic is rich, tightly woven, and consistently involving, with characters that are as well developed as their necessarily limited screen time allows.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Common Sense Media
Flat and a little formulaic; mature teens and up.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Fresno Bee
The acting is crisp all around, and Douglas' war-weary heaviness speaks volumes.
Netflix
Simply put: This is the best American film since The Godfather.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
A picture fascinating in both its complexity and absurdity.
St. Paul Pioneer Press
As exhaustively researched and carefully planned as it is, Traffic is also quite entertaining.
Irish Times
