This film was inspired by the British mini series Traffik, and updates the story of international smuggling taking it in a different direction. The story arcs were good and the series was engrossing; however, I had a number of complaints about the "look" of the film.
Too much color saturation in the Afghanistan scenes. I had to turn down the color setting almost to black and white.
Most of the scenes were so badly lit that it was impossible to see what was happening. I reset the brightness as far as it would go but still could not see in the dark. A bit more lighting on the actors faces would have helped considerably.
The fast "short attention span" editing. I would have preferred to spend longer with each individual story rather than fast 30 second cutting. This isn't MTV or a commercial, it is a drama.
I was able to compare the mini series with the British original, and unlike the much more subtle British Traffik which painted all but one character in shades of grey, and no one was without blame for the drug traffic whether users, dealers or the politicians whose policies had allowed the trade to flourish, this being an American film the good guys were good, with one exception, and the bad guys were BAD, SUPER BAD. No ambiguities here. By moving the action to Afghanistan there was plenty of opportunity for Rambo style gung ho action. Lots of kick ass Americans shooting machine guns at everything that moved. There was no in-depth explanations for why those involved did what they did. The only sympathetic character was Adam the Chechen illegal immigrant.
SPOILER AHEAD
So what was the promised twist at the end? That Mike's partner in the DEA was really an informant? I worked that out in the first five minutes. Was it that he decided to stay in Seattle and take out the garbage? Or was it that Adam did not kill Ronny Cho's partner? Loose ends do not a happy viewer make.
Too much color saturation in the Afghanistan scenes. I had to turn down the color setting almost to black and white.
Most of the scenes were so badly lit that it was impossible to see what was happening. I reset the brightness as far as it would go but still could not see in the dark. A bit more lighting on the actors faces would have helped considerably.
The fast "short attention span" editing. I would have preferred to spend longer with each individual story rather than fast 30 second cutting. This isn't MTV or a commercial, it is a drama.
I was able to compare the mini series with the British original, and unlike the much more subtle British Traffik which painted all but one character in shades of grey, and no one was without blame for the drug traffic whether users, dealers or the politicians whose policies had allowed the trade to flourish, this being an American film the good guys were good, with one exception, and the bad guys were BAD, SUPER BAD. No ambiguities here. By moving the action to Afghanistan there was plenty of opportunity for Rambo style gung ho action. Lots of kick ass Americans shooting machine guns at everything that moved. There was no in-depth explanations for why those involved did what they did. The only sympathetic character was Adam the Chechen illegal immigrant.
SPOILER AHEAD
So what was the promised twist at the end? That Mike's partner in the DEA was really an informant? I worked that out in the first five minutes. Was it that he decided to stay in Seattle and take out the garbage? Or was it that Adam did not kill Ronny Cho's partner? Loose ends do not a happy viewer make.