If you have seen the preview for this film you might be expecting a high action thriller, what you get instead is a compelling drama about the hopeless war on drugs. Don Cheadleand and Dennis Quaid Traffic delivers 2 hours and 20 minutes on intrigue.
Traffic is four stories intersecting into one.
Luis Guzm n and Don Cheadleand are DEA agents who set out to nail one of the largest importers of Drugs into the US - Carlos Ayala played by Steven Bauer. Ayala had masqueraded his illegal activity in the guise of a legitimate businessman successfully fooling his wife and the rest of his upscale southern California community but an informer proves brings down his house of cards, setting off a string of events that expose him while his wife played by Catherine Zeta-Jones has to deal with the new discovery. The real shining performance in this film was delivered by Benicio Del Toro who plays a Mexican state police officer, Javier Rodriguez, battling the drug trade problem from south of the border. Rodriguez finds himself in the middle of a war between two warring drug cartels and ultimately must decide where his loyalties lie. Del Toro s performance has Oscar written all over it topping his previous performance in his supporting role as Fred Fenster in The Usual Suspects.