10 Globe-Trotting Movies About The Illegal Drugs Trade

5. Traffic

Traffic's four main perspectives on the illegal drugs trade - the user, enforcer, politician and trafficker - are handily given their own photographic tint. While this photographic effect might feel a little heavy-handed, director Steven Soderbergh's film is an engaging and comprehensive - if somewhat flawed - overview of the dynamics at play which covers an impressive amount of ground. Soderbergh's achievement with Traffic was to transform the large-scale subject matter, covering multiple story-lines in both the US and Mexico and spanning several cities, into an interweaving narrative which still had an intimacy with the characters. In this respect Traffic is hugely successful, and Soderbergh spoke in interviews of how he had studied the films of Sweet Sixteen director Ken Loach to get a feel for capturing that naturalistic documentary style. Few Hollywood films have presented a compelling and yet restrained portrayal of the drugs trade and considered how it operates on the international level - it would be interesting to see how Soderbergh would fare if he approached the subject matter as a documentary, rather than a movie mimicking one.