The best parts of Traffic function equally well as drama and as social polemic. In Traffic , he gets mostly good performances, particularly from Del Toro, who's marvelous. The trouble is traceable to the screenplay. Yet it's also indisputable that the biggest victims of both drugs and the drug war are not overprivileged suburban teenagers free-basing cocaine. Arguably, given the Robert Wakefield character's status, that choice was necessary to make certain ironies crystal clear.
Traffic is in most respects an unusually intelligent film.
But its racial attitudes undermine too much of what's right about it. Starts Fri., Jan. 5.