SOURCE: Turan, Kenneth. “Blurring the Battle Lines.” Los Angeles Times (27 December 2000): F1.

In the following review, Turan offers a generally positive assessment of Traffic, but highlights some of the film's flaws, such as weak individual characterization and moments of melodrama.

Maybe because the opponent is so terrifying and insidious (“an allergy of the body, an obsession of the mind,” someone calls it here), our desperation to win the war against drugs detailed in Traffic has made it the most unexamined conflict of our time, something we are more than willing to throw dollars at but not so eager to actually analyze and reconsider.

Given that, it took a certain amount of nerve to tackle the chaotic, unfocused, largely unsuccessful waste of lives and money that is the drug war today in a major motion picture with an ensemble cast including Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Complex and ambitious...