Traffic doesn't deliver

I say tries because each story could have been a movie in itself and in order to include all three, director Steven Soderbergh had to abbreviate them, leaving the characters rather pale and un-intriguing.

Story number one is that of Javier Rodriguez Rodriguez (Benicio Del Toro), a Tijuana cop and his partner Manolo Sanchez (Jacob Vargas). They get involved in corrupt dealings with a drug kingpin (nooo… really?) and their story would be much more interesting if the conflict was made more important. As it is, Rodriguez struggles to do the right thing, but you kinda know how this one will end.

Story number two finds wealthy La Jollan Carlos Ayala (Steven Bauer) and his very pregnant wife, Helena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) dealing with his arrest for drug trafficking. She evidently has never had a clue what her husband was up to, but she readily steps into his shoes to preserve their high-spending lifestyle. Again, if I cared about these characters, maybe the story would be more engaging.

Story number three has some good conflict between newly-appointed U.S. drug czar Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas) and his teenage daughter Caroline (Erika Christensen), who turns into a coke junkie, apparently to escape her boring upper-class life. I almost felt sorry for Douglas’ character, then the scene shifted to another story and my sympathy slipped away.

There’s a fourth sub-story that doesn’t develop much: DEA agents Montel Gordon (Don Cheadle) and Ray Castro (Luis Guzmán) bust Carlos Ayala and watch his wife. She takes lemonade to them in their surveillance van. Cute.

There are loose connections through the stories and an in-your-face commentary on culture differences between the poor Tijuana cops and the rich Americans. No news there.

To his credit, Soderbergh did some great things with colors and angles and textures, and maybe that made it worth sitting through the 2½ hours. Maybe not.

I left the movie with the impression that the whole point was, “You win some, you lose some.” Not exactly the stuff that makes you think hard about it later.

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