TRAFFIC

The first thing that made an impression on me in this movie is the way they changed the lighting to let the audience know when they had switched countries from America to Mexico as well as the contrast of color they used when they were in the ghetto vs. in Washington, DC or at the home of Wakefield in Ohio. The tones were bright and cheerful, often with the sunshine glistening in the scenes from the cities but when Caroline and her boyfriend were in the black neighborhood where the drugs were purchased the scene became dark and dreary; lending a hidden dismal message that drugs are bad. Not only there, but when they placed the antique tone, not necessarily black and white, on the Mexican scenes it made it look like the time of old or as if you were stranded in a more destitute time period. They accomplished much of the feeling of the movie by changing the lighting this way in several scenes in the movie.

This story was also very credible. We have had a drug problem in the U.S. and elsewhere for decades that has challenged each Administration. The drug problem in the United States is not going away anytime soon and the movie helped the audience understand just how complex it is and how difficult it is for law enforcement and/or the government to control the influx and use of drugs in the U.S. and other countries. The viewer is oblivious to the fact that one of the teenagers at the up-scale house using the drugs and alcohol in one of the first scenes was Carolyn, Wakefield’s daughter, and this brought home the message that drugs affect everyone, rich and poor alike.

This movie was somewhat complex; it was a little difficult to figure out where the scenes were taking place as it jumped around so many times to begin with, but once you figured out the characters, their roles, their objectives, and the places it became clearer and clearer as the movie progressed and the inter-relationships of each character became clearer and it developed into a fairly good story. The movie incorporated simple stories of individuals and places within a complex larger story making the audience become very involved.

The title “Traffic” is intertwined into every aspect of this movie, not just the fact that they were trafficking drugs. From the first scene in Mexico on the dirt road where you realize it refers to trafficking drugs, the director uses traffic in many of the scenes: Wakefield cruising the streets in an expensive car in a low-life part of town, the kids dropping off the body at the emergency entrance, Wakefield driving with his wife and daughter, the vehicles waiting at the Mexican border, Helena going to Mexico and back, the airplane scene where they tried to figure out a new way to fight drug trafficking; it is an underlying theme throughout the whole movie.

I thought the men in the black suburbans were going to shoot the two who confiscated the truck as it wasn’t apparent that they were police officers by the shoddy looking white car and their attire. The director used attire to distinguish the poverty in Mexico and in the ghetto vs. the wealth in the cities of America. Blue jeans and basic shirts were the norm in Mexico and the ghetto vs. 3-piece suits, fancy dresses and gold and silver in Washington, DC. I also appreciated the fact that they made it more realistic for the audience to believe they were in DC by adding true characters in those of Senators Boxer, Reid, and Pelosi and other politicians.

The movie also had conflict in the case of Caroline and her drug problem vs. her father who was trying to fight drugs and her mother who obviously had experimented with them in college. I think her mother could relate to her and what she was doing even though she may have not condoned it and that was the reason she hadn’t told her husband and I think ultimately her father realized that part of the reason she did them was because of the attention she never fully got from him due to his job. They both came to the realization that no one is immune to drug use. Wakefield’s realization that the “war on drugs, can sometimes be a war on families” wakes him up to the fact that his daughter needs him to help her get through the ordeal or she may not make it, so he refuses the DC job. As you watch him trying to make the 10-point speech you can see him struggling with this fact.

It was a little hard to believe that Helena had no knowledge of her husband’s deals and drug involvement. Then, once she does know, it’s amazing how fast she picks up on what to do, who to talk to and where to meet the drug czars. And finally, (maybe I watch too much CSI) you’d have thought they’d have tracked her to the hit man by tracing the call to her phone. It seems like she turns from sweet stay-at-home mom into the hit lady way too fast.

I think this movie had a linear or chronological construction; you were introduced to several of the characters, places, and interrelationships; then were drawn into the several complexities in each situation; and then brought to the climax where Wakefield rescues his daughter and the fight against drug use goes on, the general is killed and hopefully some of the drug dealing will cease, and Javier receives his lighted baseball field for the kids where baseball symbolizes freedom and safety for these kids hopefully without drug involvement or to give them something to aspire to instead of dealing drugs. And even though Ayala, ultimately one of the bad guys for trafficking drugs is released, Montel manages to slip a bug under his table so the audience is aware that the fight against illegal drug trafficking will go on.