The Underworld

Traffic is a drama about the consequences and ironies that happen all the time in the drug dealing business. It presents various situations in which almost everyone is involved with drug problems. A few examples of what happened in the movie showed the American anti-drugs czar's daughter consuming drugs, a known businessman in Los Angeles revealed as drug dealers, poor truck drivers trafficking drugs to the US because of the need for money, and of course the leaders of the drug cartel in Mexico. The main characters are the anti-drugs czar in the United States and his family, two Mexican cops, Carlos Ayala (drug dealer) and his wife, a Mexican colonel responsible of the fight against drugs, and a pair of American cops. Traffic tries to denote the importance of doing something about drugs in our society because, just as shown in it, almost everyone can become involved in the world's largest business, and once you are in, you can never get out of it.

To show how everyone can get involved in this business, it presents people from every social level in one of the world's biggest market. For example, it goes from poor Mexican cops trying to sell confidential information about the some drug dealers and risking their own lives just for money. This information was about a supposedly legit businessman Carlos Ayala. Ayala, a very well known businessman in Los Angeles, but whose only business was drug dealing and money laundering. It also includes as example the case of the anti-drugs czar's daughter, in which it represents how even the most unthinkable person can be using drugs. She is like the ideal daughter, third in her class, member of a lot of clubs in school, part of the volleyball team and volunteer in an old convalescent home. At last it concludes that the complete American society is pretty wrapped by the drug theme and it is becoming a more harmful problem.

In the psychological aspect, it achieves a story where all people can find a character with which to identify them selves with, so that anyone who watches it can get involved in the movie. For example, the czar represents a job centered father; his wife, a very malleable mother; and their daughter, a very responsible girl who fell to a drug addiction. Another example is about the cops.