Sarah,
With all due respect, gimme a break. The point of Traffic is “be nice to your antsy and rich adolescent daughter,” etc.? No, the drug czar’s daughter drifting into drugs (and by the way, I’ve never seen a group of young, know-it-all druggies portrayed so realistically–or hilariously) is part of the movie’s message that the war exists on too many fronts to “fight.” Schematic? Sure. Fully fleshed in? Not fully, but enough. A piece of a canvas–and a continuum–bigger and more ambitious and less “preachingly liberal” than just about any drug picture made in the last 10 years? That’s my contention. I’ll take Traffic over just about any of last November/December’s releases, including American Beauty.
And for the last damn time, You Can Count on Me is NOT TV. Its roots are in the theater. “Small scale” and “simplicity of technique” are not synonyms for TV and never have been.
David
