This is not a bad film. It really isn't. Unlike the series from which it is based it misses out on where the drugs come from, who grows then and why they're grown in the first place. I imagine that this was done for space reasons.
The film attempts to show the tangled web that drugs weave whilst looking at the effects that they have on individuals and it actually manages to come close to pulling it off. Almost. But then you get the all too neat and very packaged ending which simply ruined all that had gone before it.
This has a vary good cast and for a (long) while it is a very, very good film. The immense pressures on people in Michael Douglas' position, the intelligence to realise that annoying some people doesn't make them angry, it gets you dead (a fantastic Benicio Del Toro). It shows the difference between the feel-good' rhetoric of drugs are the enemy of youth etc etc.' and the actualities of the people who are moving the drugs and making huge sums of money. Putting aside the vagaries of the plot demands in which the latest US drug tsar's daughter is free-basing like it's going out of fashion (which it is unlikely to) as well as the (massively out acted Catherine Zeta-Jones) hideously unbelievable episode of a drug barons wife taking over the reigns whilst he languishes in prison. It all kind of hangs together and it is a nice touch that the various strands of the story are colour coded, Mexico in an arid brown and the daughters world collapsing whilst bathed in ice-cold blue light.
But then, well, then near the end it all just falls to pieces. I knew the film was in danger as soon as Michael Douglas began to falter in his talk to the press, beginning with the inevitable clichés and platitudes with which these people (i.e. politicians always talk) but ending with the clichés and platitudes that only actors ever say. The film started off with the whiff of realism in the air but only managed to finish with the stench of Hollywood obscuring all vision. What was the end supposed to mean? That good people who stick together with love and hope can conquer the evils of drugs? That bad people will get caught and pay for their crimes in the end? Steven Soderbergh said that he wished to avoid telling a story in which the audience felt like they were being educated. Well he certainly managed that.
Drugs are probably the single biggest problem facing the western world at the moment and yet only one character (a friend of the daughter) actually looks at the prevailing conditions in society that limit some people to no opportunities and no chances. No hope and no future. And if I had that to look forward to, then maybe I'd be buying small bags of white powder to obliterate my brain cells as well. In fact the only character that has any inkling of how to really control the influx and threat of drugs is that of Benicio Del Toro. At least his character understands that the way to eliminate drugs is to reduce the demand. Give children hope and a future (even if this means in the film that it is that age old apple pie favourite of the states (*yawn*) baseball) and then maybe they will say no' themselves. And if everybody does that, then drugs cease to exist.
The film has its heart in the right place but it ultimately lacked the courage to see its intentions through. It was truly hard to care about the daughter (a better story of the utter blitzkrieg that drugs can do to an individual is Requiem for a Dream') and the end of that strand was utterly bland and clichéd. Much better (in my opinion anyway) would have been to let people see that whilst the fight goes on, there isn't a lot of hope, and precious little chance of victory whilst the world stays as it is at the moment.
The film attempts to show the tangled web that drugs weave whilst looking at the effects that they have on individuals and it actually manages to come close to pulling it off. Almost. But then you get the all too neat and very packaged ending which simply ruined all that had gone before it.
This has a vary good cast and for a (long) while it is a very, very good film. The immense pressures on people in Michael Douglas' position, the intelligence to realise that annoying some people doesn't make them angry, it gets you dead (a fantastic Benicio Del Toro). It shows the difference between the feel-good' rhetoric of drugs are the enemy of youth etc etc.' and the actualities of the people who are moving the drugs and making huge sums of money. Putting aside the vagaries of the plot demands in which the latest US drug tsar's daughter is free-basing like it's going out of fashion (which it is unlikely to) as well as the (massively out acted Catherine Zeta-Jones) hideously unbelievable episode of a drug barons wife taking over the reigns whilst he languishes in prison. It all kind of hangs together and it is a nice touch that the various strands of the story are colour coded, Mexico in an arid brown and the daughters world collapsing whilst bathed in ice-cold blue light.
But then, well, then near the end it all just falls to pieces. I knew the film was in danger as soon as Michael Douglas began to falter in his talk to the press, beginning with the inevitable clichés and platitudes with which these people (i.e. politicians always talk) but ending with the clichés and platitudes that only actors ever say. The film started off with the whiff of realism in the air but only managed to finish with the stench of Hollywood obscuring all vision. What was the end supposed to mean? That good people who stick together with love and hope can conquer the evils of drugs? That bad people will get caught and pay for their crimes in the end? Steven Soderbergh said that he wished to avoid telling a story in which the audience felt like they were being educated. Well he certainly managed that.
Drugs are probably the single biggest problem facing the western world at the moment and yet only one character (a friend of the daughter) actually looks at the prevailing conditions in society that limit some people to no opportunities and no chances. No hope and no future. And if I had that to look forward to, then maybe I'd be buying small bags of white powder to obliterate my brain cells as well. In fact the only character that has any inkling of how to really control the influx and threat of drugs is that of Benicio Del Toro. At least his character understands that the way to eliminate drugs is to reduce the demand. Give children hope and a future (even if this means in the film that it is that age old apple pie favourite of the states (*yawn*) baseball) and then maybe they will say no' themselves. And if everybody does that, then drugs cease to exist.
The film has its heart in the right place but it ultimately lacked the courage to see its intentions through. It was truly hard to care about the daughter (a better story of the utter blitzkrieg that drugs can do to an individual is Requiem for a Dream') and the end of that strand was utterly bland and clichéd. Much better (in my opinion anyway) would have been to let people see that whilst the fight goes on, there isn't a lot of hope, and precious little chance of victory whilst the world stays as it is at the moment.