Traffic A Movie Review	MPAA Rated - R It's 2:27 Long A Review by The Dude on the Right

"Traffic" tells three stories of how the war on drugs isn’t working which most normal people realize yet politicians don’t want to address. One story involves Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas). He’s the new US drug czar, thinks he can make a difference, and then gets to find out that his daughter is right in the middle of the war with her own drug problem. Story Two revolves around Javier (Benicio Del Toro) and Manolo (Jacob Vargas), two cops in Tijuana who get wrapped up with a Mexican army General who wants to cripple one of the Mexican drug cartels and blackmails them into helping. And Story Three has Helena (Catherine Zeta-Jones), wife of a drug trafficker who gets busted by the DEA and she is hell-bent on getting him out of jail.

Through the two and a half hours we get to see Wakefield realize that maybe one of the reasons the war on drugs isn’t working is that no one has any new ideas on how to fight the problem (a great scene on his airplane when he opens the floor for ideas, saying no idea is stupid and every idea should be heard, yet no one speaks up). Then there is the spiraling down of his daughter from an occasional user with her high school friends to being strung out and selling her body for money for drugs. While Wakefield has his problems Javier just wants Tijuana to be a nicer place to live. He thinks that by maybe helping the General take down the one cartel that things might get better, realizes the General is an asshole, and then realizes his information might be more valuable to the U.S. drug folks and all he really wants in return in a lighted baseball field so the kids can play in safety. Too bad his buddy, Manolo, doesn’t know how to work the system.

So we’ve got Wakefield trying to find his daughter who is whoring herself out, we’ve got Javier practically shitting his pants standing in front of the grave he just dug for himself, and now we’ve got Helena walking up to the DEA surveillance van offering the agents some lemonade and asking them to watch out for bad men who might try to kidnap her son. She’s a smart cookie, though, taking the advice from her husband in jail and knowing exactly what needs to be done to get hubby out of jail and who can do the job.

This is not a happy movie, nor should it be. But is it the best movie? I didn’t think so. I thought it was good, maybe a little too artsy (I really didn’t need each of the different stories shot in a different tint: sepia for the Mexican side, blue for Wakefield, and bright colors for Helena. I could easily tell what story line was being told without the color difference), and just a tad too long. I suppose it needed to be to tell the three stories, but towards the end I didn’t really care about the characters and I already got the message that the drug problem isn’t getting better. Two and a half hours of, in the end, depressing stories, (sure, Javier got his baseball field, but did it really make a dent in the drug traffic), that’s what you should expect from "Traffic."

I’ll give "Traffic" 4 stars out of 5 because the acting was good by just about everyone in their respective roles, the story perspectives were interesting especially how they intertwined, but I didn’t leave the theater with the "Best movie of the year" feeling that others keep saying it is.

That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!