Traffic: The Miniseries: Director's Cut DVD Review

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Title: Traffic: The Miniseries: Director’s Cut

Stars: Cliff Curtis, Martin Donovan, Balthazar Getty, Elias Koteas, Mary McCormack, Ritchie Coster, Nelson Lee, Tony Mustante, Justin Chatwin, Brian George, and Amanda Tapping

Writer: Ron Hutchinson

Directors: Stephen Hopkins and Eric Bross

Executive Producer: Ron Hutchinson

Languages: English and Spanish Language Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound

Subtitles: English Captions and French and Spanish Language Subtitles

Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound

Chapter Stops 36

Running Time: 4 hours and 23 minutes

MPAA Rating: Not Rated

Year Of DVD Release: 2004

Home Video Distributor: Universal Studios Home Video

Reviewer: Mark A. Rivera

What began as a miniseries that inspired the acclaimed feature film ten years later has now inspired a brand new miniseries incarnation that takes on the relationship between illegal drug distribution and weapons of mass destruction in this intriguing of “Traffic: The Miniseries.” Unlike the feature film, which basically borrowed the outline of the original miniseries “Traffik” and shifted them to a North American locale, this new incarnation of “Traffic” is brand new with stories focusing once again on three different groups of people whose lives intertwine in subtle and unexpected ways and often with tragic consequences.

Our story opens on Mike McKay (Elias Koteas), a field agent with the United States Drug Enforcement Agency who has traveled to Afghanistan to help dismantle that country's drug export operation. After making a fateful decision that effectively destroys his credibility, no one will believe him when Mike tries to tell his superiors that an Afghani drug shipment on its way to American shores, which also includes something that poses a much greater danger to the country. Meanwhile, back at Mike's Seattle home, his wife Carole (Mary McCormack) and son Tyler (Justin Chatwin) become pawns in a D.E.A. investigation that also involves Mike's long-time partner, Brent Delaney (Martin Donovan).

Ben Edmonds (Balthazar Getty) is an ambitious young Ivy League graduate who has just lost a fortune due to bad real estate investments. Strapped for cash, Ben goes to work for his father's Seattle-based garment business and soon discovers that his dad has developed close ties to the Chinese underworld through the company's shipping operations. After his father's unexpected death, Ben takes over the business, and Ronny Cho (Nelson Lee), his father's Chinese contact, approaches Ben to try and keep the same "arrangement" that he had with Ben's dad. Ben then learns that the arrangement involves allowing Ronny to use the company's shipping containers for smuggling other cargo - including the shipment of illegal aliens into the United States.

Adam Kadyrov (Cliff Curtis) is a Seattle cab driver that entered the United States illegally through Ronny Cho's immigrant smuggling operation. Adam is eagerly awaiting the arrival of his wife and daughter, who are also being smuggled into the country, but he soon learns that the ship carrying his family has gone down at sea with all hands lost. The sinking is reported to be an accident, but when bodies begin washing up on shore with bullet holes in the backs of their heads, Adam begins to doubt the report's validity. Desperate to know what really happened to his family, Adam begins to investigate, and the trail quickly leads him to even more murders - and puts his own life in grave danger.

This is the darkest “Traffic” yet. The bad are not necessarily punished and the good are not necessarily saved. While the original miniseries and feature film somehow resolved the storylines satisfactorily enough to make one feel as though they had seen a complete story and somehow shared a cathartic experience that left much food for thought. This “Traffic” leaves one too many cliffhangers to seem as if this were a complete story. The acting in particular by Elias Koteas and Cliff Curtis is terrific and the storylines have enough twists and turns to keep viewers wondering what will happen next, but it is the unanswered questions regarding certain actions that form the crux of the entire miniseries that may frustrate viewers more than involve them.

I hope this is not the prelude to “Traffic: The TV Series” because that would cheapen the entire series as a whole. We don’t need a “Traffic” franchise. There’s been enough prime time soap operas revolving around law enforcement, drugs, and now terrorism to keep people too paranoid to shut their televisions for years to come and that’s not even taking into consideration the real world events that filter through the TV, print, and Internet media everyday. What makes “Traffic” work is that we see stories about people who are not very different from the average viewer in one way or another and so far these three incarnations have been successful in maintaining this, but you can only tell variations on the same paradigm so many times before it gets old and loses the intended effect.

This DVD release is approximately four minutes longer than the version that aired earlier this year on the USA cable network. It promises a surprise twist ending, but I was a little hard pressed to notice what was different about this Director’s Cut from the original broadcast version. “Traffic: The Miniseries: Director’s Cut” is presented on DVD with a pristine anamorphic widescreen (1.78:1) aspect ratio and a well rounded English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Soundtrack. Like the feature film version of “Traffic,” the different locales have a certain look so any grittiness I would guess is intentional on the part of the filmmakers. A Spanish Language Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Soundtrack and English Captions for the hearing impaired as well as French and Spanish Language Subtitles are encoded onto both sides of the DVD as options. Side one has an approximate running length of 138 minutes and 28 seconds while side two has an approximate running time of 122 minutes and 24 seconds. The menus are all standard interactive still frames that are easy to navigate.

If you missed the cable broadcast, this DVD is definitely worth checking out and if you are a fan of the miniseries, then you can purchase “Traffic: The Miniseries: Director’s Cut” now at retailers on and offline courtesy of Universal Studios Home Video.

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