Traffic
Short description
Traffic follows several people caught up in the drug trade between the United States and Mexico. Robert Wakefield, a judge, is appointed by the president to lead the national effort against drugs, only to discover that his teenage daughter Caroline is struggling with addiction at home. In Mexico, police officer Javier Rodriguez tries to fight the cartels while dealing with corruption around him. In San Diego, Helena Ayala's comfortable life is upended when her husband, a drug trafficker, is arrested, forcing her to take charge of his business. The stories gradually connect.
Steven Soderbergh directed the film, the seventh of the thirty-five features he has directed in chronological order, arriving between Erin Brockovich and Ocean's Eleven. Stephen Gaghan wrote the screenplay with Simon Moore, and Edward Zwick, Marshall Herskovitz and Laura Bickford produced. Michael Douglas plays Robert, with Benicio del Toro as Javier, Catherine Zeta-Jones as Helena, Erika Christensen as Caroline, Don Cheadle as Montel Gordon and Jacob Vargas as Manolo Sanchez. The large production credits 140 cast members and 87 crew members.
Made for 48 million dollars, the film took about 208 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.5 out of 10 from roughly 230,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 7.1 from around 2,500 votes. A critics' rating of 8.6 from 225 reviews is noticeably higher than the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- The idea for the film arose after one of its creators watched a television series with the same theme – drugs.
- According to the script, Catherine Zeta-Jones' character was not pregnant; it was a kind of improvisation by the actress herself, which Soderbergh supported.
- The scene in which Michael Douglas' character goes to the border in California was actually filmed on the border in Tijuana (a city in Mexico). The image and sound quality are quite low, partly because the footage was not originally intended to be included in the film, and Steven Soderbergh filmed it with a handheld camera. Douglas was already out of character at that moment and started talking to the customs officer about smuggling drugs across the border. The officer began to respond, and Soderbergh filmed everything hoping the officer wouldn’t address the actor as “Mr. Douglas.”
- Scenes in the White House were filmed on the sets of the television series “The West Wing” (1999-2006), which are a practically exact replica of the White House interiors (simply made slightly wider than reality to allow for more freedom of camera movement and other filming equipment).
- When a critic expressed doubt that the daughter of one of the main characters could have straight-A grades while using drugs, screenwriter Steven Gaghan stated that the grades mentioned in the film were actually his own school grades, and that he had used drugs while in school.
- Once, at the end of a filming day, James Brolin returned to his car still wearing his general's uniform and discovered two young men attempting to steal it. The unlucky car thieves saw his uniform and bolted.
- Initially, Michael Douglas turned down the role of Robert Wakefield, and it was then offered to Harrison Ford, who agreed but suggested a slightly different take on the character. Eventually, however, Ford decided not to appear in the project, and Douglas liked the modified character so much that he finally agreed to film.
- During filming, Steven Soderbergh used three different types of film (and various post-production methods) with different color palettes and grain.
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