Search - Traffik on DVD

Traffik or Traffic

Timothy J Perior | Northridge, CA United States | 01/23/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I am a Los Angeles writer and filmmaker that was eager to see the style and magnitude of Traffic when it was released. I found it tragic, powerful and well made with reservations toward the characterization of Michael Douglas and Julia Ormond. I was completely unaware of Traffik. Sometime later Traffik was released (or re-released) on PBS and I sat amazed at the identical plots and characters except I knew I was watching the original and so far superior I was astonished that Traffic dared show its face. On the night of the Academy awards all from Traffic received their awards lauding one another and not a mention of the creative source from which they had drawn...and quartered."

From a time when C4 produced quality television...

B. Farrell | Dublin, Rep. of Ireland | 04/22/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

""Traffik" written by Simon Moore and directed by Alastair Reid is a milestone in recent British television history. It is a beautifully crafted and terrifying vision of the international drugs trade and the effect this trade has on different individuals. It destroys the myth from a Western European viewpoint that heroin begins and ends its life in areas of urban decay and dislocation and gives us an unemotional snapshot of the whole process of its production.
Steven Soderbergh's US adaptation was always going to fail to reach the heights of its British counterpart (although it was a highly worthy effort), and an issue and narrative of this scale needed six hours (at least) to give it gravitas. Each character in "Traffik" is well developed and expertly played: Bill Patterson's Jack Lithgow, the stubborn drugs czar who fails to comprehend the problem he is tasked with solving while simultaneously watching his college educated daughter (Julia Ormond) slip further into heroin addiction; Lindsay Duncan as a drug importer's wife who plays the Lady Macbeth role much more effectively than Catherine Zeta Jones in "Traffic"; Jamal Shah as Fazal, opium farmer turned heroin producer and the closest thing the audience has to having it's conscience openly voiced; Fritz Muller Scherz's single minded Hamburg cop, out to bust the suppliers and dealers no matter what the cost.
One of the main strengths of this mini series is that in never uses too many quick emotional taglines. The viewer is sucked into the storyline of each character and is constantly forced to re-assess their previous assumptions. Fazal is a particularly good example of this. By the final episode we finally see Moore and Reid create some brilliantly gut wrenching moments: Fazal's vengeance for his wife's death against his drug lord patron (Tallat Hussain) via a heroin filled syringe and Jack's final fall and redemption give the series a depth the US version could only aspire to.
The other strengths of the series are too numerous to mention. Aside from the main characters there is excellent support from Linda Bassett, George Kukura, Tilo Pruckner and for my money, Ronan Vibert as Caroline's (Julia Ormaond) drug supplier, Lee.
On the technical front, scenes in Hamburg and London are filtered in a cold cyan while those in Pakistan are given a warm ochre only helping to underline the claustrophobia of the slums and mansions of Karachi and the general corruption that permeates them. Add to this a brilliantly evocative soundtrack you have one of the best drama series to be produced in Britain in many years."