Give 'em enough coke . . . Traffic By Shaun de Waal t's enough to make one check into an ashram. The subject of drugs and addiction seems especially hard to get away from at the moment.
Traffic is an issue picture, without being in any way as dull as that makes it sound.
Basing their work on the British TV documentary Traffik , which traced the progress of drug supply from the East to Europe, Soderbergh and scriptwriter Steve Gaghan provide a set of intersecting storylines which illustrate and illuminate the state of play in the drug wars that so consume American consciousness - and lives. Oh, yes, and he operated the cameras himself. In the yellow section, Benicio del Toro plays a stoical Mexican policeman trying to stem the flow of drugs over the border into the US - and he does so with an extraordinary grace, in a powerfully understated performance that exposes all the cop's dilemmas. With every film, and the older and more worry-creased he gets, Douglas becomes a better character actor. In Traffic he is totally credible.