Traffic

An all-star, ensemble cast sprinkled across four interleaving arcs of a tandem, hyperlinked plot that structurally reflects the film' miniseries origins. Also reflecting those long-form origins, it dawdles too much in the first half and ought to have had at least 20mins of fat cut from it.

Each star gets their moment to shine through several powerful scenes, the majority of which involve long-forgotten Julia Stiles doppelganger Erika Christensen in an exceptional one-off performance.

The movie has an ornate, archival aura from its shaky camerawork and grainy film, and an equally ornate use of color grading to differentiate its four storylines. Unfortunately these two features react to make the film look like a camrip, more distracting than it is artistic or assistive.