TRAFFIC (2000). At first glance, Steven Soderbergh's film seems raw, hip, and trenchant -- but look again and it may seem merely a cynical film about cynicism that is, in its own way, more conventional than Erin Brockovich. Story #1 starts in the desert south of the border, where honest Mexican cop Javier Rodríguez (Benicio Del Toro, who took an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor) and partner Manolo (Jacob Vargas) have bagged a van full of coke only to have it impounded by slippery General Salazar (Tomás Milián). Story #2 finds Justice Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas) about to become the president's new drug czar in Washington even as his teenage daughter Caroline (Erika Christensen) gets introduced by boyfriend Seth (Topher Grace) to the pleasures of crack cocaine. Story #3 has beaming and pregnant Helena Ayala (Catherine Zeta-Jones) totally unaware that undercover cops Roy Castro (Luis Guzman) and Montel Gordon (Don Cheadle), who in story #4 are pulling a sting on coke dealer Eduardo Ruiz (Miguel Ferrer), are about to reel in her drug-kingpin husband, David (Alec Roberts), whom she always thought was a respectable San Diego businessman. Based on a 1980s British Channel 4 television series, Traffic deftly compresses its story lines to make you feel you're watching half a dozen episodes at once. What this dazzling mix can't do is disguise the way the Michael Douglas plot line drifts off into a toothless variation of Paul Schrader's Hardcore, or make Zeta-Jones's transformation from vacant trophy wife to tough cookie as convincing as her swordsmanship in The Mask of Zorro. And though Soderbergh knows how to reverse your expectations -- a character introduced as a merciless killer becomes a figure of wretched pity when naked and tortured -- he's not above exploiting them. But if Traffic is not the high point of his career, it's at least worth the trip -- and it got him an Oscar for Best Director.

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