The end of the world as we know it (1/6/01)
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Traffic. [Steven Soderbergh, 2000.]
A multiply-storylined but wholly clichéd examination of the War on Drugs, structured for the most part around the evolution of government bigshot Michael Douglas from Stern Granitejawed Disciplinarian New-Drug-Czar Dad to Caring Nurturing Supportgroup Ex-Drug-Czar Dad as he chases down his errant daughter Erika Christensen, whom freebasing has turned from an private-school honor student into a drugaddled zombie who fucks black guys for crack money in ghetto hotels [the descent into the lower classes ... the horror ... the horror ...] — while in the meantime Catherine Zeta-Jones progresses from bewildered shock when her drug-entrepreneur husband is arrested to managing his business while he’s in the slammer to hiring a hit on the principal witness against him to get him off and out, mildly corrupt go-along-to-get-along Tijuana cop Benicio del Toro gets sucked into the turf war between two Mexican cartels and reluctantly becomes a hero, and lots of people get shot and tortured, lots of doors get kicked down, lots of exciting chases make lots of cops look like they’re doing lots of Really Important Stuff, lots of DEA guys in lots of anonymous vans do lots and lots of illegal electronic surveillance, and lots of important people in Washington smoke cigarettes and drink whiskey [oh, the irony] and bullshit one another at cocktail parties while many millions of pounds of ever-purer product cross an ever-more-porous border. — Shot in meticulous handheld jumpcut homage to the French New Wave on carefully distressed film stock with amazing quantities of grain filtered nearly down to tinted black-and-white; again it’s obvious that the author has learned a lot from Godard and Altman. — And thus wonderfully complex and beautifully realized but ultimately tiresome. The war on drugs is a fraud; Soderbergh should know better than to belabor the obvious.
____________Boobs and farts (1/4/01)
