Director Steven Soderbergh lays out the facts in three related stories that span the levels of the drug trade. The three stories complement each other and are well acted and engrossing. This movie is long, but the time flies by. Traffic is based on Traffik , a British miniseries that detailed the drug trade between Britain and Pakistan.
Traffic moves the setting to Mexico and the United States.
Soderbergh uses different lens tints to frame each story. Some people think it to help differentiate each story, but it is more to separate each level of the drug trade. He commutes between his responsibilities in Washington and his family in Cincinnati. She just learned that the source of their money was chiefly from the illegal drug trade. Now, she is facing mounting debts and threats from her husband's associates, which leaves her no choice but to turn to the drug trade herself.