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Direction
Theme
Traffic, directed by Steven Soderbergh, analyzes the war on drugs occurring in the United States. Soderbergh took an approach that caused every scene to have an underlying attitude of defeat. It made the audience feel as if the war on drugs was not winnable and, in fact, the status quo was causing more harm than good. In one scene, the arrested drug dealer asks the cop how much bad would have happened if he had just let the drugs go through. According to the dealer, the cop's partner would not have died and only a few people would have gotten high. Also, the discovery that Mexican General Salazar, thought to be working with the U.S. Government to fight drugs, was a drug lord himself displayed the corruption that hinders the fight.

Filming
A myriad of locations were used in the film, but all of them were filmed with a slightly different feel. Most noticeably, the scenes filmed in Mexico were done with a shaky, handheld camera. As well, these shots possessed a brown, dusty shade. All scenes in Mexico were spoken in Spanish, which meant adding English subtitles. At times, these were hard to read when the background was white. At the teenagers "get-together" house, the visuals were intended to give a drug-like effect. Soderbergh accomplished this with overlapping shots and fading transitions. Scenes including with Michael Douglas and his family were clear and shot straight with hardly any camera movement. The technique of shooting from behind the person talking was used frequently as were 360 degree spins in San Diego scenes.

Plot
The plot was divided into three major storylines: The Judge's family, Mexican corruption, and the San Diego drug arrests. The characters of these plots interact with one another but never truly enter each other's story.

Judge's Family
This aspect contained the most relatable storyline of a relationship between parents and their daughter who has started hanging out with the wrong crowd. Erika Christensen does a tremendous job of portraying a teenager dealing with serious depression and an increasingly powerful addiction to drugs. She shows her range from appearing as a normal girl to a heavily addicted drug user to a sympathetic figure in the end. This part of the story culminates with Michael Douglas, the American judge and father of Erika, realizing, "If there is a war on drugs, then many of our family members are the enemy. And I don't know how you wage war on your own family." In this scene, Soderbergh strongly conveys

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