Traffic (2000 film)

Traffic
Film poster with five people shown from the neck up. The man on the left has his pointer finger pressed against his lips; the woman to his right has long hair and is smiling; the three men on the right have grim looks as they stare to the right. Below them are several vehicles and a man holding a gun that is getting shot. The top of the image includes the starring credits, while the bottom includes the title of the film and the main credits.
Theatrical release poster
Directed bySteven Soderbergh
Screenplay byStephen Gaghan
Based onTraffik
by Simon Moore
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyPeter Andrews
Edited byStephen Mirrione
Music byCliff Martinez
Production
companies
Distributed by
  • USA Films (United States and Canada)
  • Initial Entertainment Group (International)[1]
Release date
  • December 27, 2000 (2000-12-27) (United States)
Running time
147 minutes
CountryUnited States
Languages
  • English
  • Spanish
Budget$48 million[2]
Box office$207.5 million[3]

Traffic is a 2000 American crime drama film directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by Stephen Gaghan. It explores the illegal drug trade from several perspectives: users, enforcers, politicians, and traffickers. Their stories are edited together throughout the film, although some characters do not meet each other. The film is an adaptation of the 1989 British Channel 4 television series Traffik. The film stars an international ensemble cast, including Don Cheadle, Benicio del Toro, Michael Douglas, Erika Christensen, Luis Guzmán, Dennis Quaid, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jacob Vargas, Tomas Milian, Topher Grace, James Brolin, Steven Bauer, and Benjamin Bratt. It features both English and Spanish-language dialogue.

20th Century Fox, the original financiers of the film, demanded that Harrison Ford play a leading role and that significant changes to the screenplay be made. Soderbergh refused and proposed the script to other major Hollywood studios; it was rejected because of the three-hour running time and the subject matter—Traffic is more of a political film than most Hollywood productions.[4] USA Films, however, liked the project from the start and offered the filmmakers more money than Fox. Soderbergh operated the camera himself and adopted a distinctive color grade for each story line so that audiences could tell them apart.

Traffic was released in the United States on December 27, 2000, and received critical acclaim for Soderbergh's direction, the film's style, complexity, messages, and the cast's performances (particularly del Toro's). Traffic earned numerous awards, including four Oscars (from five nominations): Best Director for Steven Soderbergh, Best Supporting Actor for Benicio del Toro, Best Adapted Screenplay for Stephen Gaghan and Best Film Editing for Stephen Mirrione. It was also a commercial success with a worldwide box-office revenue total of $207.5 million, well above its estimated $46 million budget.

In 2004, USA Network ran a miniseries—also called Traffic—based on the film and the 1989 British television series.

  1. ^ "Traffic (2000)". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. Retrieved 1 March 2024.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Dargis was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ "Traffic (2000)" Archived 2015-08-15 at the Wayback Machine. Box Office Mojo. IMDb. Retrieved 2012-03-03.
  4. ^ Dargis, Manohla. "Traffic: Border Wars". The Criterion Collection.