Creepy crawly tense. I mean, it's not like the beginning of an action movie, all speedy cuts and craning cameras. Instead, it's working a subtler nerve, alternating between extreme long shots of a seared-white desertscape and shots of men in trucks that are almost unreadably close. As it turns out, though Javier and Manolo are themselves cops, they have precious little sway when it comes to drug traffic. As if a force unto themselves, beyond all legal, social, moral, or even political powers, drugs cross borders, produce wealth, cost lives.
Drugs are a system, and they never stop moving.
At once indignant and sad, epic and detailed, Soderbergh's movie has already won critics' prizes and spots on ten-best lists. At first glance, it looks to be about as different from his first release of this year, Erin Brockovich , as it can be. They mean to reveal the failures of the U.S. drug wars as systemic, the militaristic rhetoric as empty, even cynical promise-making. In Traffic , good news is most always accompanied by plenty of bad. When he stalls, Ray tells bad jokes, trying to cut tension.