Traffic is a 2000 American crime drama film directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by Stephen Gaghan.
It explores the illegal drug trade from a number of perspectives: users, enforcers, politicians, and traffickers.
Their stories are edited together throughout the film, although some of the characters do not meet each other.
The film is an adaptation of the 1989 British Channel 4 television series Traffik.
20th Century Fox, the original financiers of the film, demanded that Harrison Ford play a leading role and that significant changes to the screenplay be made.
Soderbergh refused and proposed the script to other major Hollywood studios, but it was rejected because of the three-hour running time and the subject matter—Traffic is more of a political film than most Hollywood productions.
USA Films, however, liked the project from the start and offered the filmmakers more money than Fox.
Soderbergh operated the camera himself and adopted a distinctive color grade for each story so that audiences could tell them apart.
Traffic was critically acclaimed and earned numerous awards, including four Oscars: Best Director for Steven Soderbergh, Best Supporting Actor for Benicio del Toro, Best Adapted Screenplay for Stephen Gaghan and Best Film Editing for Stephen Mirrione.
It was also a commercial success with a worldwide box-office revenue total of $207.5 million, well above its estimated $46 million budget.
(wikipedia)