Traffic (2000 film)

In Mexico, police officers Javier Rodriguez and Manolo Sanchez stop a drug transport. General Salazar, a high-ranking Mexican official, interrupts their arrest to offer Javier a special assignment: apprehending Francisco Flores, a hitman for the Tijuana Cartel, headed by the Obregón brothers.

In Tijuana, under torture, Flores gives Salazar the names of Obregón cartel members, who are arrested. Javier and Salazar's efforts cripple the Obregóns' cocaine outfit, but Javier discovers that Salazar is a pawn of the rival Juárez Cartel; Salazar's anti-drug campaign is a charade to wipe out the Juárez Cartel's competitors.

Sanchez attempts to sell information about Salazar's true affiliation to the Drug Enforcement Administration, but Salazar has him murdered in the desert with Javier forced to watch. Javier arranges a deal with the DEA to testify against Salazar in exchange for electricity in his neighborhood to keep local children from being tempted by street gangs and crime. Salazar's secrets are revealed, and he is arrested.

Javier makes a statement to the media about the widespread corruption in the police force and army. Later, Javier watches as children play baseball at night in their new stadium.

Robert Wakefield, a conservative Ohio judge, is appointed to head the President's Office of National Drug Control Policy as drug czar, though he is warned that the War on Drugs is unwinnable. Meanwhile, Robert's teenage daughter Caroline has been using cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin, developing a drug addiction after her boyfriend Seth introduces her to freebasing. Caroline, Seth, and their friend Vanessa are arrested when they try to dump an overdosing fellow student at a hospital. Robert and his wife Barbara struggle to deal with Caroline's addiction, which Barbara has secretly known about for months.

Robert finds himself caught between his demanding new position and difficult family life. Visiting Mexico, he is encouraged by Salazar's successful efforts in hurting the Obregón brothers. Returning to Ohio, Robert learns that Caroline has run away to Cincinnati after stealing money from her parents to pay for drugs.

Dragging Seth along, Robert searches Cincinnati for his daughter. After a drug dealer who is prostituting Caroline refuses to reveal her whereabouts, Robert breaks into a seedy hotel room and finds a semi-conscious Caroline in the company of an older man. In Washington, D.C. to present a "10-point plan" to win the War on Drugs, Robert falters halfway through the speech, and tells the press that the War on Drugs implies a war on one's own family, which he cannot endorse. Later, Robert and Barbara attend a Narcotics Anonymous meeting with Caroline, telling the other attendees that they are "here to listen".

In San Diego, an undercover DEA investigation led by Montel Gordon and Ray Castro leads to the arrest of Eduardo Ruiz, a dealer posing as a fisherman. Ruiz gives up his boss, drug lord Carl Ayala, the Obregóns' biggest distributor in the United States. Ayala is indicted by a tough prosecutor, hand-selected by Robert Wakefield to send a message to the cartels.

As Ayala's trial begins, his pregnant wife Helena learns of her husband's true profession from his associate, Arnie Metzger. Facing the prospect of life imprisonment for her husband and death threats against her child, Helena hires Flores to assassinate Ruiz and end the trial nolle prosequi. Flores plants a car bomb, but is killed by a sniper in retaliation for his cooperation with General Salazar, and the bomb meant to kill Ruiz instead kills Agent Castro.

Knowing Ruiz will soon testify, Helena makes a deal with Juan Obregón, who forgives the Ayala family's debt and has Ruiz poisoned. Ayala is released, and he deduces that Metzger accepted $3 million to inform on Ruiz to the FBI and facilitate Ayala's downfall; Metzger is later visited by armed men. Soon after Ayala's release, Gordon bursts into his homecoming celebration and is forced out. Having planted a listening device under Ayala's desk, Gordon smiles as he walks away.

Some aspects of the plotline are based on actual people and events:

• The character General Arturo Salazar is closely modeled after Mexican General Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, who was secretly on the payroll of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, head of the Juarez Cartel.
• The character Porfirio Madrigal is modeled after Fuentes.
• The Obregón brothers are modeled after the Tijuana Cartel's Arellano Félix brothers.^[5][6][7]

At one point in the film, an El Paso Intelligence Center agent tells Robert his position, official in charge of drug control, does not exist in Mexico. As noted in the original script, a Director of the Instituto Nacional para el Combate a las Drogas was created by the Attorney General of Mexico in 1996.

Steven Soderbergh had been interested in making a film about the drug wars for some time but did not want to make one about addicts.^[8] Producer Laura Bickford obtained the rights to the British television miniseries Traffik (1989) and liked its structure. Soderbergh, who had seen the miniseries in 1990,^[9] started looking for a screenwriter to adapt it into a film. They read a script by Stephen Gaghan called Havoc, about upper-class white kids in Palisades High School doing drugs and getting involved with gangs.^[10] Soderbergh approached Gaghan to work on his film but found he was already developing a film about drugs for producer/director Edward Zwick. Bickford and Soderbergh approached Zwick, who agreed to merge the two projects and come aboard as a producer.^[8]

Traffic was originally going to be distributed by 20th Century Fox, but it was put into turnaround unless actor Harrison Ford agreed to star. Soderbergh began shopping the film to other studios, but when Ford suddenly showed interest in Traffic, Fox's interest in the film was renewed; the studio took it out of turnaround.^[11] Fox CEO Bill Mechanic championed the film, but he departed from the studio by the time the first draft was finished. It went back into turnaround.^[12] Mechanic had also wanted to make some changes to the script, but Soderbergh disagreed^[2] and decided to shop the film to other major studios. They all turned him down because they were not confident in the prospects of a three-hour film about drugs, according to Gaghan.^[10] USA Films, however, had wanted to take on the movie from the first time Soderbergh approached them.^[12] They provided the filmmakers with a $46 million budget, a considerable increase from the $25 million which Fox offered.^[2]

Soderbergh had "conceptual discussions" with Gaghan while he was shooting The Limey in October 1998; they finished the outline before he went off to shoot Erin Brockovich.^[8] After Soderbergh was finished with that film, Gaghan had written a first draft in six weeks that was 165 pages long.^[10] After the film was approved for production, Soderbergh and Gaghan met two separate times for three days to reformat the script.^[10] The draft they shot had 163 pages with 135 speaking parts and featured seven cities.^[8] The film shortens the story line of the original miniseries; a significant character arc of a farmer is taken out, and the Pakistani plotline is replaced with one set in Mexico.^[9]

Harrison Ford was initially considered for the role of Robert Wakefield in January 2000 but would have had to take a significant cut in his usual $20 million salary.^[13] Ford met with Soderbergh to flesh out the character. Gaghan agreed to rework the role, adding several scenes to the screenplay. On February 20, Ford turned down the role, and the filmmakers brought it back to Michael Douglas, who had turned down an earlier draft. He liked the changes and agreed to star, which helped greenlight the project.^[13] Gaghan believes Ford turned down the role because he wanted to "reconnect with his action fans".^[10]

The filmmakers sent out letters to many politicians, both Democrat and Republican, asking them to make cameo appearances in the film. Several of the scenes had already been shot using actors in these roles, but the filmmakers went back and reshot those scenes when real politicians agreed to be in the film.^[14] Those who agreed, including U.S. Senators Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer, Orrin Hatch, Charles Grassley, and Don Nickles, and Massachusetts governor Bill Weld, were filmed in a scene that was entirely improvised.^[9]

The project was obtained from Fox by Initial Entertainment Group and was sold to USA Films by IEG for North American rights only. Steven Soderbergh never approached USA Films, and Initial Entertainment Group fully funded the film.

After Fox dropped the film in early 2000, and before USA Films expressed interest, Soderbergh paid for pre-production with his own money.^[10] USA Films agreed to give him the final cut on Traffic and also agreed to his term that all the Mexican characters would speak Spanish while talking to each other.^[13] This meant that almost all of Benicio del Toro's dialogue would be subtitled. Once the studio realized this, they suggested that his scenes be shot in English and Spanish, but Soderbergh and del Toro rejected the suggestion.^[13] Del Toro, a native of Puerto Rico,^[15] was worried that another actor would be brought in and re-record his dialogue in English after he had worked hard to master Mexican inflections and improve his Spanish vocabulary. Del Toro remembers: "Can you imagine? You do the whole movie, bust your butt to get it as realistic as possible, and someone dubs your voice? I said, 'No way. Over my dead body.' Steven was like, 'Don't worry. It's not gonna happen.'"^[13] The director fought for subtitles for the Mexico scenes, arguing that if the characters did not speak Spanish, the film would have no integrity and would not convincingly portray what he described as the "impenetrability of another culture".^[9]

The filmmakers went to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and U.S. Customs early on with the script; they told them that they were trying to present as detailed and accurate a picture of the current drug war as possible.^[9] The DEA and Customs pointed out inaccuracies in the script. In addition, they gave the production team access to the border checkpoint to Mexico, as shown in the film during the scene in which Wakefield and his people talk with border officials. Despite the assistance, the DEA did not try to influence the script's content.^[9] Soderbergh said Traffic had influences from the films of Richard Lester and Jean-Luc Godard. He also spent time analyzing The Battle of Algiers and Z, which, according to the director, had the feeling that the footage was "caught" and not staged.^[12] Another inspiration was Alan J. Pakula's film All the President's Men because of its ability to tackle serious issues while being entertaining.^[16] In the opening credits of the film, Soderbergh tried to replicate the typeface from All the President's Men and the placement on-screen at the bottom left-hand corner. Analyzing this film helped the director deal with the large cast and working in many different locations for Traffic.^[16]

Half of the first day's footage came out overexposed and unusable.^[13] Before the financiers or studio bosses knew about the problem, Soderbergh was already doing reshoots. The insurers made him agree that any further mishaps resulting in additional filming would come from the director's pocket.^[13] Soderbergh shot in various cities in California, Ohio, and Texas, on a 54-day schedule and came in $2 million under budget.^[8] The director acted as his cinematographer under the pseudonym Peter Andrews and operated the camera himself to "get as close to the movie as I can" and to eliminate the distance between the actors and himself.^[17][8] Soderbergh drew inspiration from the cinema verite style of Ken Loach's films, studying the framing of scenes, the distance of the camera to the actors, lens length, and the tightness of eyelines depending on the position of a character. Soderbergh remembers, "I noticed that there's a space that's inviolate, that if you get within something, you cross the edge into a more theatrical aesthetic as opposed to a documentary aesthetic".^[8] Most of the day was spent shooting because a lot of the film was shot with available light.^[12]

For the hand-held camera footage, Soderbergh used Panavision Millennium XLs that were smaller and lighter than previous cameras and allowed him to move freely.^[8] He adopted a distinctive look for each to tell the three stories apart. For Robert Wakefield's story, Soderbergh used tungsten film with no filter for a cold, monochrome blue feel.^[8] For Helena Ayala's story, Soderbergh used diffusion filters, flashing the film and overexposing it for a warmer feel. For Javier Rodriguez's story, the director used tobacco filters and a 45-degree shutter angle whenever possible to produce a strobe-like sharp feeling.^[8] Then, he took the entire film through an Ektachrome step, which increased the contrast and grain significantly.^[8] He wanted different looks for each story because the audience had to keep track of many characters and absorb a lot of information, and he did not want them to have to figure out which story they were watching.^[9]

Benicio del Toro had significant input into certain parts of the film; for example, he suggested a more straightforward, concise way of depicting his character kidnapping Francisco Flores that Soderbergh ended up using.^[9] The director cut a scene from the screenplay in which Robert Wakefield smokes crack after finding it in his daughter's bedroom. After rehearsing this scene with the actors, he felt that the character would not do it; after consulting with Gaghan, the screenwriter agreed, and the filmmakers cut the scene shortly before it was scheduled to be shot.^[10]

Balboa Park, downtown San Diego and La Jolla were utilized as the environment for the film.^[18]

The first cut of Traffic ran three hours and ten minutes.^[8] Soderbergh cut it to two hours and twenty minutes. Early on, there were concerns that the film might get an NC-17 rating, and he was prepared to release it with that rating, but the MPAA gave it an R.^[8]

In the United States, the film was released on DVD on May 28, 2002, by The Criterion Collection.^[19] In Australia, Traffic was released on DVD by Village Roadshow, with an MA15+ rating. Despite the Australian packaging stating the length to be 124 minutes, the actual DVD version is just over 141 minutes long.

Traffic was given a limited release on December 27, 2000, in four theaters where it grossed US$184,725 on its opening weekend. It was given a wide release on January 5, 2001, in 1,510 theaters, grossing $15.5 million on its opening weekend. The film made $124.1 million in North America and $83.4 million in foreign markets for a worldwide total of $207.5 million, well above its estimated $46 million budget.^[2][20]

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 93% based on 223 reviews, with an average rating of 8/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "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."^[21] On Metacritic, the film has received an average score of 86 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".^[22] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.^[23]

Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars, and wrote: "The movie is powerful precisely because it doesn't preach. It is so restrained that at one moment—the judge's final speech—I wanted one more sentence, making a point, but the movie lets us supply that thought for ourselves".^[24] Stephen Holden, in his review for The New York Times, wrote: "Traffic is an utterly gripping, edge-of-your-seat thriller. Or rather it is several interwoven thrillers, each with its own tense rhythm and explosive payoff".^[25] In his review for The New York Observer, Andrew Sarris wrote: "Traffic marks [Soderbergh] definitively as an enormous talent, one who never lets us guess what he's going to do next. The promise of Sex, Lies, and Videotape has been fulfilled".^[26]

Entertainment Weekly gave the film an "A" rating and praised Benicio del Toro's performance, which critic Owen Gleiberman called, "haunting in his understatement, [it] becomes the film's quietly awakening moral center".^[27] Desson Howe, in his review for the Washington Post, wrote: "Soderbergh and screenwriter Stephen Gaghan, who based this on a British television miniseries of the same name, have created an often exhilarating, soup-to-nuts exposé of the world's most lucrative trade".^[28] In his review for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers wrote: "The hand-held camerawork – Soderbergh himself did the holding—provides a documentary feel that rivets attention".^[29] However, Richard Schickel of Time, in a rare negative review, finds the film's biggest weakness to be that it contains the "cliches of a hundred crime movies" before concluding that "Traffic, for all its earnestness, does not work. It leaves one feeling restless and dissatisfied".^[30] In an interview, director Ingmar Bergman lauded the film as "amazing".^[31]

Steven Soderbergh received dual nominations for Best Director that year for both Erin Brockovich and Traffic, winning the award for the latter.

Traffic appeared on several critics' top ten lists for 2000. Some of the notable top-ten list appearances are:^[69]

• 2nd: A. O. Scott, The New York Times
• 2nd: Jami Bernard, New York Daily News^[70]
• 2nd: Bruce Kirkland, The Toronto Sun^[71]
• 3rd: Stephen Holden, The New York Times
• 3rd: Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
• 3rd: Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
• 4th: Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
• 4th: Jack Mathews, New York Daily News^[72]

• Hyperlink cinema—the film style of using multiple interconnected story lines
• List of media set in San Diego
• Mexican Drug War
• Narco film

 

Wikiquote has quotations related to Traffic.

• Traffic at IMDb
• Traffic at Metacritic  
• Traffic at Rotten Tomatoes
• Traffic at Box Office Mojo
• Traffic at AllMovie
• Traffic: Border Wars an essay by Manohla Dargis at the Criterion Collection