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Traffic (2000)
Rate:
9
Viewed:
1/04, 4/05, 8/18
4/05:
Traffic is an overlong but gritty movie with a fair amount of above-average to excellent acting.
There's Benicio del Toro, and there's everybody else. He's the sole reason why I watched the movie again. His
performance is classy which won him the Oscar.
Yes, the movie is interesting and all, but I'm overwhelmed by the enormity of the parallel storylines and the
number of players involved. If there's anything I hate the most, it's the scenes with the preppy high school
kids who have meaningless dialogues about nothing important.
Michael Douglas is okay. Catherine Zeta-Jones is too snobbish to generate sympathy from me. Luis Guzman is fair while Don
Cheadle is miscast due to his poor acting skills. It's been a long fall for Dennis Quaid, a great actor whose cocaine
addiction had finally caught up with him. Steven Bauer looks done, having struggled with alcohol and drug addictions
for numerous years and therefore squandered his acting talent.
All in all, Benicio del Toro is the best thing about Traffic.
8/18:
Traffic won Oscars for Best Supporting Actor, Best Director, Best Film Editing, and Best Adapted Screenplay, and I must
say each selection had been correct.
Benicio del Toro is the reason to watch the film over and over. It's such a classy performance that ends with his character
watching a kid baseball game and knowing what he had done. He has another great scene when he's in the pool with two
DEA agents for a chat.
It's not easy to convert a film with many competing storylines into an outstanding picture, but Steven Soderbergh, who's
been a top-notch director in his own right, accomplished the feat and that's why he won the Oscar. In fact, Traffic,
not Gladiator, should've won the Oscar for Best Picture.
The tale of Benicio del Toro's character and his partner is the grittiest and most real. One smart decision is using a distinct
color for each storyline. Hence, it's easy to adjust whenever there's a switch.
Of course, to revisit Traffic many times is to be shackled with the dreadful chore of putting up with several pathetic
characters, who are played by Erika Christensen (when I thought that was Julia Stiles), Topher Grace (again but Jeremy
London), and Catherine Zeta-Jones, having problems that I don't give a flying fuck about. They're hard to watch in the
cringeworthy sense.
It's interesting to see Michael Douglas portraying a father whose daughter is a drug addict because that's how it played
out in real life for him with his son Cameron who served seven years in prison for heroin possession, sale of
methamphetamine, and smuggling drugs into prison.
By the way, notice that Miguel Ferrer is in the film playing Eduardo Ruiz. His father, José Ferrer, was the first Puerto
Rican (and also Hispanic) to win an Oscar by playing Cyrano de Bergerac. Benicio del Toro is the third Puerto Rican ever to so
although he originally didn't know how to speak Spanish. Rita Moreno was the second for
West Side Story.
All in all, Traffic is compelling, and Benicio del Toro earned the Oscar.