Pubdate: Wed, 03 Jan 2001
Source: Daily Gazette (NY)
Copyright: 2001 The Gazette Newspapers
Contact:  P.O. Box 1090, Schenectady, NY 12301-1090
Fax: (518) 395-3072
Website: http://www.dailygazette.com/
Author: Richard Cohen
Note: Richard Cohen is a nationally syndicated columnist.

FILM CRITICS NOT WEARING ANY CLOTHES

"Traffic," the new film by Steven Soderbergh, is on almost everyone's list 
of the top 10 films of 2000 and has already won the New York Film Critics 
Circle Award. It did so, mind you, before it even opened here - not to 
mention anywhere else. That is just one of the oddities of this film. The 
other is this: It's stupid.

This is a movie about the drug trade between the United States and Mexico. 
The plot is based on the assumption that you have not read a newspaper in 
the last 20 years and would, for example, find it surprising that some 
members of the Mexican military are corrupt. For authenticity, certain U.S. 
senators appear at a Washington cocktail party, but after that one scene, 
nothing again makes sense.

For instance, DEA agents guarding a witness who has been marked for death 
leave their car unguarded so that some mean-looking Mexican assassin can 
plant a bomb under it. In the same vein, these same agents, guarding the 
same incredibly valuable witness, do not hesitate to open the hotel room 
door to someone who merely identifies himself as the person bringing 
"breakfast." Soderbergh must think the "D" in DEA stands for "dumb."

But then, lots of people in this movie are dumb. The major drug lord, for 
instance, comes right out of jail and uses the phone in his own house to 
talk business, and threaten an associate. A bit earlier, some Mexican bad 
guys kidnap some Mexican good guys from the streets of San Diego and take 
them across the border handcuffed to the car's shoulder belt mounting.

This, though, is nothing. In this film, the U.S. drug czar (Michael 
Douglas), is a one-time conservative Ohio judge who does not realize that 
his very own daughter is - you guessed it - a druggie. Before you can even 
begin to appreciate this thermonuclear cliche, the 16-year-old girl runs 
away from home and becomes a hooker to support her habit. Does her father 
the drug czar call in the police to find this runaway child whose life is 
clearly in danger? Not if he's Michael Douglas he doesn't. He searches for 
her himself.

To list the absurdities, stupidities and inanities of this movie would not 
only take the rest of this column, it would be pointless - but something of 
a public service. You will not likely find it done anywhere else. Instead, 
all but one of the critics I've read are in thrall with Soderbergh's 
movie-making whiziness. He shot the film himself. He used a hand-held 
camera. He employed filters to impart a parched, brownish tint to Mexico, a 
brightish one for San Diego and a blue one for Cincinnati, the hometown of 
our dumb-as-a-post drug czar.

It was Alfred Hitchcock who used the term "icebox scene" to describe the 
moment when a moviegoer realized that a part of a film made no sense. If 
that moment occurs hours after the movie is over - when the person who has 
seen the movie is reaching into the icebox for a late-night snack - that's 
permissible. But if the icebox scene occurs as you are watching the movie, 
then that is not permissible. This movie is a train wreck of iceboxes.

You will note that nowhere in this devilishly clever movie review did I 
used the term "bad" or "dull" or "boring." "Traffic" is none of those 
things. I realize, as do you, that a movie need not make sense for it to be 
fun or even emotionally moving. "Casablanca" is hardly realistic. Among 
other things, people did not escape from concentration camps in Palm Beach 
suits. It is, however, emotionally true.

"Traffic" is not in that league by a long shot. It is simply a good-enough 
film. It could have been a lot better, however. But the critics, who write 
as if they are fellow filmmakers, refuse to hold the real filmmakers to 
even a minimal standard of cliche avoidance or verisimilitude and, instead, 
widely praise a movie that makes no sense. It should receive an award for 
Most Cliches in a Feature Film With Tinted Lenses. It will probably, 
instead, receive an Oscar.

I, too, admire Soderbergh. He is a talented director. But he knows he 
cheated on this one and, worse, he knows he got away with it. The 
obligation of the critics to call him on his cliches and absurdities was 
not exercised in this case. I give the film three stars. I give the 
reviewers none.
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