But Del Toro forges Javier s moral strength and Machiavellian stealth out of something that is at once odd and intuitively reasonable. Del Toro s puffy eyes silently register pain, humor, and in one instance, vindictive anger, while barely moving at all. His performance is somehow both subtle as a whisper and emotionally rousing. It s a testament to Soderbergh s way with actors that, in a movie so stylish and visually dynamic, where the documentary realism is at times so withered and bleached it borders on expressionism, one feels compelled to point out how vivid every performance is. Soderbergh s commitment to his characters helps tame the incendiary politics and reins in whatever impulse he may have had to take cheap shots.
Traffic is, in fact, an unusually serious political movie.
When it comes to politics, Hollywood typically gives us potboilers and polemics, where facts and characters serve either hackneyed story lines or fevered agendas. Traffic has a point of view, but, with few exceptions, it makes its case cannily and without self-congratulation. You have to hand it to a movie about this topic that saves its most pointed jab for the vested bureaucratic interests behind the war on drugs. Because Traffic so quickly and completely swarms you with the messiness of its stories, it is a bit surprising that Soderbergh and Gaghan resolve them in fairly tidy d nouements. At least one of these wrap-ups is a bit too pat, at first too histrionic and then too insular in its Hollywood values.