Traffic · reception & legacy

2000 · Steven Soderbergh

How Traffic has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

An instant critical event in 2000 — four Oscars and 'important movie' status overnight — and it's still rated as peak Soderbergh, though its once-daring color-coded look now reads to some as the most dated thing about it.

What's debated

The yellow-filter Mexico sections are the flashpoint: visionary visual shorthand to some, the heavy-handed template for Hollywood's clichéd 'Mexico looks like a sepia oven' grading to others.

Its footprint

Traffic basically invented the 'Mexico filter' — the piss-yellow tint that became a running joke about how American movies and shows (looking at you, prestige TV) color-grade anything south of the border.

Where it stands

A fixture of the 2000-was-a-great-movie-year conversation and the crown jewel of Soderbergh's legendary run, with Benicio Del Toro's performance the thing everyone agrees on.

★ Did you know? Soderbergh was nominated for Best Director twice in the same year — for Traffic AND Erin Brockovich — the first double nomination in the category since 1938, and he won for Traffic. He also shot the film himself under his cinematographer pseudonym 'Peter Andrews.'

Named by the director

Influences Steven Soderbergh has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.

The Battle of Algiers (1966) — Soderbergh cited its handheld, documentary-style immediacy as the model for Traffic's you-are-there realism.
Z (1969) — He pointed to Costa-Gavras' political thriller as a touchstone for making an urgent issue film move like a docu-thriller.