Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.0

Traffik Blu-ray Movie Review

Crash.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 14, 2018

The famed occultist Aleister Crowley once opined “spelling is defunct,” and even though he may have been hinting at magic(k)al incantations and not orthography, anyone who has ever frequented the internet will know that there is a whole host of “alternative facts” when it comes to ordering letters in a “correct” way. Lest anyone mistake the film currently under review for Steven Soderbergh’s Academy Award winning 2000 film Traffic, this film’s title comes adorned with a “k” at the end, but here’s the irony (which some fans of the Soderbergh opus may already know): Soderbergh’s film began life in a previous incarnation as a 1989 British miniseries entitled, yep, you guessed it, Traffik. Any and all comparisons between Soderbergh's now classic film and this pretty lamentable outing end with the putative similarities of their titles, however, for this particular Traffik is more of a, well, train wreck.

It’s hard to even know where to begin with Traffik, but according to a supplement which includes an interview with writer-director Deon Taylor, he got the idea for the film when he saw a news report which listed his home town of Sacramento as one of the top five cities for human sex trafficking. Taylor perhaps wisely saw a feature in that data point, but his attempt to exploit a “ripped from the headlines” aspect goes seriously awry almost from the get go, and a lot of the film instead plays like a B-movie (and that’s being charitable) version of home invasion offerings like Straw Dogs. The film opens with some passing “montage service” briefly showing women being hoarded into sex slavery, but then weirdly just segues to crusading journalist (is there any other kind in a film like this?) Brea (Paula Patton). It’s Brea’s birthday, so she gets a kind of weird message from her boyfriend John (Omar Epps) (“I have to work tomorrow and today” — isn’t that backwards?), as well as a colleague who alerts her that the political corruption scandal story she’s been working on for months has just been scooped by another reporter at her paper. That leads to a ridiculous showdown with her editor Mr. Waynewright (William Fitchener), where you can just see the hint of a tear in the corner of Brea’s eye, which of course alerts you to the fact that she’s both vulnerable but steely.

Brea and John end up heading off for a deluxe villa in the countryside, which is where the bulk of the rest of the film plays out, but on the way they stop at one of those grimy rural gas stations which typically has an elder warning visitors not to proceed any further. In this particular case, Brea catches the eye of a villainous biker gang type named Red (Luke Goss), as well as a pretty haggard woman named Cara (Dawn Olivieri), who engages in a bit of subterfuge with Brea that later spills into the plot dynamics. In a rather tension filled scene, Red’s (Caucasian) henchmen start hassling John as he’s outside filling the tank, and that spills over into a rote but exceedingly well staged car - motorcycle chase. But here’s the thing — Taylor spends all this time setting up this “showdown”, and then just up and abandons it (at least for a little while) once Brea and John reach the impossibly beautiful retreat and just start swimming in the impossibly beautiful infinity pool there. This weird ping ponging continues throughout the film, repeatedly enervating any perceived momentum as the film becomes more and more patently ridiculous.

Suffice it to say that Brea and John’s interchanges with Red and his gang have only begun, but things get even more ludicrous in the last half hour or so of the film when an evil deputy sheriff named Sally Marnes (Missi Pyle) turns out to be involved in all the trafficking shenanigans and (of course — of course) Brea herself is taken captive. Traffik has commendable issues it wants to raise, but it frames everything in such an over the top, hyperbolic manner that any “message” is buried beneath the increasingly artificial plot mechanics.

Still, Taylor coaxes some good performances out of the players, and the film is buoyed by some really nice looking cinematography from ace lensman Dante Spinotti. Had trafficking been allowed to remain front and center Traffik may well have kicked into high gear, but unlike the tricked out sports car that’s just one of many needless sidebars in this film, the story here kind of sputters in fits and starts and ultimately ends up stalling.

Note: My colleague Brian Orndorf evidently felt more or less the same way I did about Traffik when it was exhibited theatrically. You can read Brian’s thoughts here.

Traffik Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Traffik is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. The closing credits for the film have the "captured with Alexa" credit, and the IMDb lists two Alexa products as having digitally captured the imagery, but I did notice that one of the cameras seen in the Spinotti supplement had a Sony label, for whatever that's worth. A lot of this transfer is aces, with excellent detail levels and really warmly burnished palette, especially in some of the "magic hour" sequences before the you know what hits the fan. However, large swaths of the film play out in near darkness, and there are definite deficits in shadow detail throughout rather long sequences, where it's downright hard at times to completely make out what's going on, even when close-ups are employed. While Spinotti does mention the use of Steadicam in the supplement devoted to his cinematography, there's quite a bit of "jiggly cam" at play as well, something that kind of unavoidably leads to a perception of softness since things in the frame jump around so much. Despite some variances in detail levels and overall shadow definition, there are no compression anomalies, and generally speaking this a solid accounting of a nicely filmed production.

Traffik Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Traffik features a fairly boisterous DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, one that derives quite a bit of energy and surround activity from a glut of source cues as well as the occasional set piece like the big car - motorcycle chase in a scenic canyon. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout and Geoff Zanelli's score resides nicely in the side and rear channels quite a bit of the time.

Traffik Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Journey into the Depths: Making Traffik (1080p; 16:09) is a standard issue EPK with some decent interviews.


• Deon & Dante: The Look of Traffik (1080p; 8:28) is a more interesting piece focusing (sorry) on cinematographer Dante Spinotti.

Traffik Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Traffik wants to combine a home invasion plot with human trafficking and the two just don't mix very well, even with the completely predictable "linkage" of having one of the people in the home end up as an ostensible sex slave. It's all pretty ridiculous, though the film does benefit from committed performances and some especially nice cinematography from Dante Spinotti. Technical merits are generally solid for those considering a purchase.