Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic (2001) was a critical and commercial blockbuster and an ambitious and prescient tour de force. He won his sole Best Director Oscar for the film, which, in its complex multiple storylines and passionate vision of the brutality of the drug trade, is a clear precursor of The Wire—which first aired on HBO the following year.
The Wire remains a cultural touchstone and is still cited as the greatest television show of all time. Traffic, in contrast, was admired when it was released, but has faded in importance and relevance. The comparison with its successor makes it clear why; for all its technical virtuosity and noble intentions, the film’s predictable, preachy, and tedious in a way that The Wire never was. Even more than Erin Brockovich from the same year, Traffic underlines the downsides of Soderbergh’s shedding of his indie idiosyncrasies in the pursuit of Hollywood success.
The 148-minute Traffic follows three overlapping storylines linked to the drug trade. In the first, Mexican police officer Javier Rodriguez (Benicio del Toro) works with corrupt general Arturo Salazar (Tomas Milian) to bring down the Obregón cartel in Tijuana to clear the way for the rival Juárez Cartel. In the second, Judge Robert Wakefiled (Michael Douglas) is appointed to the role of US drug czar as he deals with the addiction of his daughter Caroline (Erika Christensen). In the third, drug lord Carlos Ayala (Steven Bauer) is arrested, leading his pregnant wife Helena (Catherine Zeta-Jones ) to pick up his business and try to free him.
The goal of these sometimes parallel, sometimes interweaving storylines is to provide a Dickensian overview of the drug trade from the perspective of cartels, police and users. But the supposed complexity and nuance is more trumpeted than convincing. The police (or at least the US police) are noble; the drug lords are vicious; addicts are innocents corrupted. The moral is that we need to do better at getting the bad guys and have more compassion for addicts.
In 2001, that looked like impressive complexity to Oscar judges. But just a year later, The Wire did everything that Traffic was trying to do but with more insight, better writing and better acting.
In The Wire, the police are often corrupt and often just assholes. The dealers have few other options and are, in any case, human beings with hopes, dreams, and relationships. When they’re killed or their lives are destroyed, you care, rather than just cheering the righteous retribution. Stringer Bell and Omar—two of the most indelible characters in The Wire—have no parallels in Traffic, where dealers are all lurking inhuman monsters. The closest thing to a sympathetic figure associated with the cartel is Helena—and Catherine Zeta-Jones plays her with a cold deliberation that encourages you to direct your empathy just about anywhere else.
The Wire’s politics are also substantially more complicated. Traffic frames the options as tough on drugs or treatment; there’s no real discussion of legalization (not even for cannabis). More, there’s no real exploration of the possibility that law enforcement and politicians simply don’t care about drugs except as a stepping-stone to possible power and votes. Wakefield’s the main political figure we see, and he’s sincere; all he needs to do to find a better path forward is to “listen” as he says at the film’s denouement. The Wire’s portrayal of a cynical bureaucracy focused on nonsense stats and the appearance of progress above all makes Traffic look like a Hollywood fantasy.
Most things aren’t as good as The Wire. You could argue that it’s just bad luck that Soderbergh’s ambitions were so thoroughly and completely outshone by those of Wire showrunner David Simon. I think more than bad luck is involved. Simon’s show was great in part because of his passionate love for the city of Baltimore, in all its mess and beauty. He cared about the drug trade because he cared about its effect on his city; The Wire is didactic in a lot of ways, but the didacticism is in the service of teaching viewers to love the Baltimore that Simon loves.
Soderbergh doesn’t have any particular investment in this film, its characters, its places, or its message. Early Soderbergh films like Sex, Lies, and Videotape and Schizopolis were odd and individual; you could see that Soderbergh put his heart into them. Traffic exists not because Soderbergh had something to say, but because he wanted to make an Important Film about an Important Topic. Instead, he made a clichéd, shallow dud that’d be unnecessary even if The Wire didn’t exist.