Unlike most multicharacter pastiches, such as the ones made by Robert Altman, or Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia , the characters of Traffic 's three tales don't constantly crisscross, nor are they all brought together by a big event.
Intersections are rare in Traffic , and the junctions that do occur are often fleeting.
Soderbergh effortlessly weaves the individual strands into a tapestry that is at once cohesive and characterized by its contrasting colors. Traffic may sound like a grim exercise in arty pretense, but the weightiness of the subject matter doesn't necessarily keep the film from being an accessible entertainment . It is easy, almost too easy, to peg Traffic as merely a statement on the futility of the war on drugs. Reviewed by Michael Dequina . Please report any problems to the webmaster .