So it's no fun to report that "Traffic" is something of a disappointment, albeit one that takes more chances than most directors' successes. The film is an Americanized version of a British TV miniseries, "Traffik," directed by Simon Moore for the U.K.'s Channel 4, and I don't think there's a scene in it that doesn't demonstrate Soderbergh's ambition or innovation. The failure is sadder because "Traffic" hums with the desire to make a good, meaty, provocative movie. Its shortcomings, however, can't diminish its one genuine thrill: the thrill of someone saying in a clear voice, "It's all bullshit."

The bullshit in this case is the government's ongoing war on drugs. "Traffic" comes at a time when there's evidence the public is beginning to doubt what politicians are telling it. The year-end issue of Rolling Stone reports that voters in California, Oregon, Utah, Colorado and Nevada approved measures that would allow the medicinal use of marijuana, allow nonviolent drug offenders to choose treatment instead of jail and restrict police from keeping seized property. (In one case, the government confiscated the life savings of a retired Oregon schoolteacher who unknowingly sold property to a man who used the land to grow pot; never accused, let alone convicted, the man never got back his money.)

And yet the majority of our politicians continue to claim that the war on drugs has already shown signs of success. Soderbergh doesn't dispute that. "Traffic" says that the war on drugs has been a roaring success -- for drug dealers. Soderbergh lays out how our policy of interdiction has been a boon for corruption and crime and how the lives endangered by drugs go far beyond drug users'.

"Traffic" tries to chart a course through the morass of blinkered good intentions, hypocrisy and lies that form the basis of our drug education and policy. The film intertwines four stories, from the highest levels in Washington, where a federal judge (Michael Douglas) is about to become the president's new drug czar while having to deal with the addiction of his daughter (Erika Christensen), to the streets of Tijuana, Mexico, where a local cop (Benicio Del Toro) tries to round up drug traffickers only to be caught in the tug of war between the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the corrupt Mexican army.

The film also tells the stories of two Los Angeles cops (Don Cheadle and Luis Guzman) working on turning a midlevel dealer (Miguel Ferrer) and of a woman (Catherine Zeta-Jones) who discovers that her husband (Steven Bauer) is a drug importer and slowly takes over the reins of his business.

The separation of the four stories (which somewhat overlap) bluntly articulates the film's thesis: that everyone, from the user to the most powerful dealer, from the lowliest street cop to the government's biggest drug honcho, is caught in the same cycle. "Traffic" makes its points very clearly and very cogently. It's hard to think of an argument for the drug war the film doesn't effectively counter. And some of its devices are chancy; at one point, Soderbergh puts lines about just how futile the war against drugs is into the mouth of a dealer. That's part of the movie's point, too. The dealer has the experience with drugs that people who inveigh against them most vocally lack.

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