Themes: Drug Trade, Fighting the System, Down on Their Luck
Main Cast: Bill Paterson, Julia Ormond, Linda Bassett, Lindsay Duncan, Fritz Muller-Scherz, Jamal Shah, Talat Hussain
Release Year: 1989
Country: UK
Run Time: 325 minutes
Plot
This four-hour, six-episode British miniseries, broadcast on Channel 4 in 1989 and in America on PBS's Masterpiece Theatre in 1990, provided the basis for Traffic, Steven Soderbergh's 2000 Oscar winner. Though Soderbergh and screenwriter Stephen Gaghan borrowed much of their plot and structure from the original, Traffik focuses on the European drug trade instead of the American one and utilizes England, Germany, and Pakistan as its major settings. One of the three primary plot strands involves Jack Lithgow (Bill Paterson), a member of the British Parliament, who discovers that his daughter, Caroline (Julia Ormond), is a heroin addict despite the fact that he leads the country's Drug Abuse Committee. In a parallel story line, Helen Rosshalde (Lindsay Duncan), the British wife of German drug smuggler Karl Rosshalde (George Kukura), must take over her husband's illegal operations after an associate turns state's evidence and Karl goes on trial. In the third interwoven segment, and the one that diverges the farthest from the plot of the American film, Pakistani poppy farmer Fazel (Jamal Shah) ingratiates himself to drug overlord Tariq Butt (Talat Hussain) in order to support his family after the Pakistani government, at the insistence of Lithgow and other British officials, cracks down on the subsistence-level farmers who supply the heroin trade with its raw materials. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
Review
Though it's less stylish than Steven Soderbergh's big-screen version, the original miniseries Traffik displays more nuance and detail than the shorter, star-laden Oscar-winning remake. Writer Simon Moore's expansive script takes in more layers of the drug trade -- from the journalists who cover it and the dirt-poor farmers whose labor powers it to the street dealers who are far more prevalent than the preppie thrill-seekers of Soderbergh's version. Although the film is shot in a naturalistic palette, Traffik is not without a certain visual flair; the sequences set in Pakistan in particular introduce viewers forcefully to the mixture of beauty and squalor that serves as a backdrop to the genesis of narcotics production. Traffic does little to question the moral rightness of the American "war on drugs," but Traffik, by highlighting the economic and cultural realities of the developing world, paints a less cut-and-dry portrait of this international phenomenon. Bill Paterson's Jack Lithgow proves a less familiar, more human protagonist than Michael Douglas' grand standing drug czar, while Linda Bassett gets more to work with than Amy Irving does in the part of the government official's wife. All of the principals, in fact, acquit themselves admirably even when the writing reveals its television origins. It doesn't have the sparkle of a Hollywood showpiece, but in its place we get a script with a lot more gray areas, and a glimpse at the drug trade half a world away from our own backyard. In fact, the European and South Asian settings guarantee that Traffik will seem fresh even to rabid fans of the celebrated Traffic. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
Alastair Reid - Director, Neil Thomson - Editor, Jon Gregory - Editor, Andrew John McClelland - Editor, Tim Souster - Composer (Music Score), Martyn Hebert - Production Designer, Hans Zillman - Production Designer, Clive Tickner - Cinematographer, Andreas Grosch - Production Manager, Brian Eastman - Producer, Simon Moore - Screenwriter
