Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Audiophilander (i) on July 31, 2001 at 15:24:59

In Reply to: Oh yeah? posted by Victor Khomenko on July 24, 2001 at 19:17:07:

No offense, but in this audience member's opinion Steven Soderbergh's "Traffic" was the biggest waste of film stock since Robert Altman's dog-poop laden farce "Pret-a-Porter" (Ready to Wear). Michael Douglas has rarely been more "hammy" and unbelievable and Catherine Zeta-Jones looked like she phoned in her performance. About the only actor who deserved the praise lavished on this film was Benicio Del Toro. The obtrusive overexposure of film to denote differences between the hot slimey world of the Mexican drug dealers and the cold sterile clueless suburban world of the Washington DC drug enforcement bureaucrats was so blatant that it constantly drew attention to itself. Shame on Steven for his lack of subtlety and unwillingness to let his actors tell the story, even if it was poorly written. The fact that most of Hollywood jumped on the bandwagon and embraced this tripe in order to appear concerned about the proliferation of drugs says more about the desire to maintain a positive public image in the midst of so much bad press about the growing number of actors with drug addictions than it does about sincere concern over drug abuse. BTW, the disappointing cliche` riddled script was written by Steven Gaghan, who, in theory, can do no wrong... well, at least until he writes his first financial flop.

In short, being stuck for over 2 hours in "Traffic" was plenty long enough.

Now Soderbergh's OTHER nominated film from this years Oscars, "Erin Brockovich," is a MUCH better film with genuinely stellar acting from Julia Roberts. Add to that a wonderful performance by Albert Finney and it's a must see film; BTW, the DVD has a WEALTH of deleted scenes (over 30 min. worth!), many of which explain certain behaviors, but were unnecessary to move the story forward and thus edited to tighten the plot and shorten the film's running length. This film was much easier to sit through and had a very positive hopeful message.

AuPh