Touches You

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

When watching traffic it evokes memories of more recent and more popular shows like narcos. You get a similar setting and overall feel to it. However traffic is different in that it was made just after the events it depicts took place. This puts it in an interesting place for movies. Because it is set in the time it was filmed and is meant to be that time and makes this clear you are almost taking back in time 18 years. On top of this the movie doesn't use any effects that have aged badly or look inferior now. So over all I would say the movie has aged well and is still very much watchable. Michael Douglas' character could be argued to be the main character so it is important to look at how his arc ended. Specifically his resignation. This was for a few main reasons the main of which being his daughter. He also could not look the American people in the eyes and tell them that their own families are the enemy. I would also attribute the betrayal of general Salazar as a factor as well. This showed him how corrupt everything was and how the only person he thought was helping in Mexico really wasn't. The last important thing to talk about is the elephant in the room of the tone and colour shifts from scene to scene depending on the location. Although a cool concept I don't think it adds to the story and I just see it as a gimmick.

Traffic was different than any other film I have watched. The first thing that I noticed as soon as the movie started was the different colours for all the different story lines. In the beginning, I wasn't a fan of the colour changes. I found that it was distracting and made it hard to follow what was happening. As the movie went on I was able to focus on the plot instead of the change of colours. Overal, I think this movie has aged well. I have seen the different colours in a few other films created after 2000. Other films use the different colours in flashbacks or to set the mood. Michael Douglas' character was very important in this film; he was my favourite character. His character was very developed and we were able to really feel what he felt. He was trying to control the drug use in the Usa. Little did he know, his daughter was using. He could no longer work to fight drugs if he couldn't keep his own home drug free. After finding out about his daughter he had to make a step back from his job. He couldn't tell people not to do something if he couldn't stop his daughter from doing it, he also needed to support her and help to overcome this problem.

Even though the movie was made in 2000, the subject stills up and really important to be discussed, since until today it's a tabu in society and many people need to be informed about it. Robert Wakefield had a really important post in the film, but he resigned it after seeing that the traffic is really different from what he thought. He realized that after losing his own daughter to the drugs, which was a good student and from a "good" family, so the concept that all the drug addicts was bad people was wrong. Also, he realized that there was no way to stop the traffic, since even if they arrest an important drug dealer, someone else would replace him. Another thing was that, he saw that most of the drug dealers didn't had another choice, so they were doing this for the sake of survival. The difference tones helped the storyline by the fact that is easier to notice where the part is happening.

This gem of the millennium comes with a great story (which has been done countless times before and after), great actors (funny faced most of them), and very well done action.Unfortunately all is wasted on the terrible actual telling of that story and its people in action. We get weird colors, useless zoom ins, shots into nothing, a boring soundtrack, the whole thing stripped off any continuity and stretched to 2 hours 30 minutes.It is understandable the makers of this film wanted to underline the realism with a documentary style, but come on. Or maybe they just were on some of the drugs shown in the picture, or maybe, and that must be it, they wanted the audience to feel like they were on drugs.