And the fact that Soderbergh, as his own cameraman and cinematographer, has employed natural light, doesn't make Traffic any less visually da ring. Soderbergh describes Traffic as his $49 million Dogme movie, and certainly the hand-held style pushes the post-Blair Witch boundaries of mainstream moviemaking, but with the multiple storylines and delicately poised moral ambiguity, Traffic is closest in feel to a feature-length episode of NYPD Blue - indeed, it's no coincidence that Gaghan won an Emmy for his work on the revolutionary cop show. It's like a documentary with all the boring bits taken out. But what we are dealing with here is economy: Soderbergh's signature cutting, always to the chase, establishes a breathless rhythm which is more real than real. Just as his imaginative framing of a seduction reinvigorated the traditional love scene in 1998's Out Of Sight, Soderbergh works similar wonders with his largest canvas yet: two countries, three distinct storylines, well over 100 speaking parts. to a new plane is Soderbergh's storytelling skills. What elevates this company - drug dealers, corrupt cops, informants etc. Not much in Traffic's screenplay is entirely new- painstakingly researched and full of inside detail, certainly, but we have been here before (especially if you caught the original Channel 4 mini-series, Traffik, upon which Stephen Gaghan based his script). Welcome to Steven Soderbergh's 'run and gun' movie. Then a plane lands overhead and the movement starts in the form of constant running, camera slung loose over a shoulder, which doesn't let up for two and a half hours. Inside, two Spanish men talk in their native tongue about dreams. We open on a car parked in the desert, suffused with sun-bleached light. Watching Traffic, it's a while before you realise you're watching a movie made in America.
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