'TRAFFIC' HAS NEED FOR SPEED BUT MAKES IT WORK.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

Steven Soderbergh has been Mr. Busy this year, first directing the lively ``Erin Brockovich'' and then directing and photographing the hugely ambitious ``Traffic.'' It combines three different stories into an intelligent and multifaceted look at the illegal narcotics trade.

Although its virtues are manifold and splendid, ``Traffic'' feels like it was made by somebody who was a little too busy. It resembles an extended episode of ``NYPD Blue'' - which is better than playing like an extended episode of ``ER,'' and that's no small accomplishment. Eighty percent of this dreary year's movies should aspire to such a high degree of serious intent and narrative integrity.

It's no surprise to learn that the film is based on a well-regarded British television production, ``Traffik,'' in that it bears a certain over-reliance on rhythmic, ``big moment'' plot beats. It also overemphasizes the morally obvious and seems a little thin in the character development department. The ``Traffic'' cops and crooks, victims and bystanders are defined well by the ways in which they relate to the various crises in their lives, but are afforded precious little life beyond those basic story needs.

There is more than enough to each tale to hold one's interest, though. And while Soderbergh intercuts among the three with an astute sense of counterpoint and momentum, he never stretches one narrative into a direct comment upon another. Rather, we're just shown the many different ways that drugs and their illegality affect individuals and communities.

The self-evident notion that none of this is good is rather too easily reinforced at every turn. Yet the director and screenwriter Stephen Gaghan (``Rules of Engagement'') don't offer simple solutions to any problems. Indeed, to their great credit, they insist on the probable but unsettling truth that no possible cure may be better than any of the social disease's symptoms.

The Mexico sequence involves a Tijuana cop, Javier Rodriguez (Benicio Del Toro in the film's finest performance) and his squirrelly partner Manolo (Jacob Vargas). They get deeply enmeshed in the murky politics of warring drug cartels and the federales (led by a super-smooth Tomas Milian) whose job, at least officially, is to curtail the outlaws.

Across the border in beautiful La Jolla, Tarantino-esque DEA partners Ray Castro (Luis Guzman) and Montel Gordon (Don Cheadle) bicker and joke their way through a raid on importation middleman Eduardo Ruiz's (Miguel Ferrer) operation. Nailed hard, Ruiz turns state's evidence against his boss, whose beautiful and very pregnant English wife Helena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) had no idea he was engaged in felonious activity. But with her comfortable lifestyle and children's future at stake, Helena proves a remarkably quick study in the bloody family business.

Meanwhile, in Cincinnati, Ohio Supreme Court Justice Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas) has just been tapped to become the president's new drug czar. At a Washington cocktail party - if not the film's best scene, certainly it's most absurdly amusing - Wakefield is assaulted with a cacophony of drunk D.C. insiders' different opinions about how to fight the drug war. Some are delivered by such real-life politicos as senators Barbara Boxer and Orrin Hatch.

In the film's most predictable plotline, Wakefield's straight-A daughter Caroline (Erika Christensen) is barely straight-anything-else most hours of the day. When her snarky preppy friends deliver the addicted blond innocent to the (gasp) part of town where black people live, Douglas morphs before our eyes into George C. Scott doing ``Hardcore.'' It is not a pretty sight.

Speaking of sights, much has been said - a lot of it by Soderbergh himself - about the film's hand-held, straightforwardly framed cinematography. He was going for a you-are-there kind of immediacy with the look, something he felt would take too long to communicate to another cameraman. So he handled the lensing himself and took credit under the pseudonymous name of his father, Peter Andrews (it was a union thing). Soderbergh certainly achieved his main goal; as the movie and its increasingly stressed characters move along, viewers will feel like they're right in there with the action.

Soderbergh color coded the three different story lines - in grungy sepia for the Mexico scenes, bluish-gray in the WASPish Midwest, and brightly color-saturated in pretty San Diego - a technique that smacked of cultural stereotyping. Maybe another director of photography would have come up with a better idea.

In the huge canvas Soderbergh is painting here, however, a few off colors don't damage the overall view too much. While ``Traffic'' could have been deeper, richer, even more complex, it could not have been smarter or more upfront.

And with dishonest movies a drug on the market these days, it would be understandable if true cinema lovers got hooked on this relatively pure, well-cut stuff.

``TRAFFIC''

(Rated R: violence, drug use, language, sex, nudity)

The stars: Michael Douglas, Don Cheadle, Benicio Del Toro, Luis Guzman, Dennis Quaid, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Erika Christensen, Miguel Ferrer, Topher Grace, Tomas Milian.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Written by Stephen Gaghan, based on the British television miniseries ``Traffik.'' Produced by Edward Zwick, Marshall Herskovitz and Laura Bickford. Released by USA Films.

Running time: Two hours, 27 minutes.

Playing: Avco, Westwood.

Our rating: Three stars

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Michael Douglas plays a judge selected by the president to lead the war on drugs, while he and his wife, portrayed by Amy Irving, encounter an addiction in their own family, in ``Traffic.''