Yesterday, Steven Soderbergh announced that psychological thriller Side Effects will be his final feature and that he is set to retire. This is incredibly sad news to lovers of movies as Soderbergh has been one of Hollywood's most prolific directors since his acclaimed debut in 1989. Soderbergh is one of the few directors who have had a successful career in Hollywood whilst still maintaining their independent aesthetic as he has balanced the big budget efforts (Ocean's Eleven, Erin Brockovich) and his personal independent projects (The Girlfriend Experience, Full Frontal) over the course of his career. Steven Soderbergh will be a great loss to cinema, his films being popular with everybody from hardcore cinephiles to teenage girls. Now, perhaps more than ever, seems as good a time as any to look at his 5 greatest films.
5. Traffic (2000)
In his Oscar winning success, Steven Soderbergh analyses the drugs trade and America's War on Drugs with grand ambition and interconnected storylines featuring dealers, addicts, politicians, policemen and drug lords being the main focus. Traffic weaves in and out of three separate narratives commenting on the drug trade though it never gets preachy and like all of Soderbergh's best work, it is heavily restrained. Soderbergh may restrain the story and the dialogue but the film has an incredibly distinctive style as the director experiments with a variety of filters and techniques so the three stories have very different looks. In 2000, Soderbergh became only the second director in sixty years to be nominated for Best Picture twice in the same year (with the far inferior Erin Brockovich). 2000 signalled Soderbergh's promotion to the big leagues after his period of struggle during the mid-nineties and his explosive thriller showed a director that could make big, expansive studio movies as well as quirky independent films. It's an intensely gripping film, though the multiple narratives can become a discrepancy as they switch just as one really heats up, but overall Traffic is a great film that never buckles under its own ambition. There are no certainties in the film as it realistically portrays flawed human beings on each side of the law. The one thing that is certain, however, is that Traffic is one fine film.