Drama/crimes, a series on the rise in the television land, but still looking to solidify its place in the theaters. Yet, this weekend, another film attempts to bait us into another mystery, one that promises violence, drama, and potentially uncover a hidden threat that has lurked beneath the service. Robbie K back to write another review this time on:
Movie: Traffik
Director:
Writer:
Stars:
Paula Patton, William Fichtner, Missi Pyle
LIKES:
Setting: The beautiful wilderness of this movie is the shining jewel for this reviewer. Gorgeous views of the forest and plains are only further offset by the breathtaking houses that dwell within. The team behind the camera certainly deserve major props for the fantastic capturing of the natural splendor our characters are in.
Cinematography: Past the setting, the cinema team is fantastic at capturing the adventure on film. Traffik’s drama unfolds in full splendor, the audience feeling the torture bleeding off our “heroes” as they dive deeper into the mess. In addition, all the action that unfolds is easy to follow, as the stable camera work keeps its focus on all the details at hand. It’s edited smoothly and does a fantastic job of immersing you into the events at hand. So well done on that.
Edge: Traffik keeps the current girl power movement alive and does so with an edge that is sure to get a few of the audience members hooting and hollering. The edge contained within this movie is dark, granting it a bite more piercing that the knives the villains use. In addition, the movie has a great balance of morals vs. safety looking to help potentially motivate you to make a change. It certainly isn’t the worst in terms of violence, but it still hits you hard as the darker moments begin to come alive.
Acting: I won’t go into too much detail, but the acting is good enough to make the film semi-raise to life. The leads feel like a couple plagued by problems, but in love enough to at least put those problems on hold to help them recover. As for the bad guys, they look and act like scum, each having that sleazy, demon spawned, heathen quality that all protagonists have. Deadly in regards to attitude and savagery, the cast has crafted an assortment of character to help draw you into the seedy underbelly that awaits.
DISLIKES:
Drawn Out Drama: Thrillers prove to be successful when they provide you know thrills and chills to leave you in suspense until the big moment. When Traffik finally gets to the exciting parts, it’s been nearly 60 minutes of the 100-minute run time, which doesn’t bode well. The first part feels like a soap opera with better graphics, the drama very shallow, immature, and cheesy to the point of eye-rolling proportions. It’s an attempt to add some heat to the four central figures, but this cheap background story development didn’t fit for me in the grand scheme and only the delayed the component I was there for.
Anti-Climactic Excitement: It took us long enough to get to the faster, more intense parts, so now it’s time for you to be on the edge of your seat, right? Wrong! Traffik held potential, but it didn’t deliver on its promise of thrills and chills. The action was short lived, the stunts rather minor, the pace felt off, and even worse… most of the guys were incredibly stupid/or had bad aim with whatever devices they had. Outside of the yelling and intense orchestral score… these exciting parts were a little boring, with only the slightest hint of wonder left in how deep the rabbit hole went. There was one scene with some bite, but the rest was a predictable mess that was unnecessarily drawn out.
Sheer Stupidity of The Characters: It’s one thing to have teenagers make dumb decisions in these kinds of movie. Adults on the other hand… need to have more common sense than the characters I watched on the screen. The party of “heroes” made laughable, predictable choices that completely defied logic and offered no hope of nobility for much of the movie. Any attempt to redeem their lower parts was simplistic and only a few heroic moves were capable of rising to the challenge. Second, the villains were hormonal charged, sexually aggressive, nimrods who made a lot of weak mistakes that were out of character. Given all the illegal activity they’ve been doing, these criminals surely have more brains than this right? Worst of all, the main woman essentially caused all these problems by being too nosey, violating privacy in a world that was obviously bigger than it seemed. No matter how many chances she had to bail herself out, she kept making the choices to drag her and her friends back in. Very stupid development.
Predictable: The movie tried to throw in twists to spice things up, but they did not come close to fooling me in this movie. Much of this is due to our characters being completely stupid in their choices, but other things were ruined by the foreshadowing the movie blatantly threw into the mix. Don’t hold your breath for surprises guys, for this movie didn’t have them.
THE VERDICT:
Traffik held potential, but in all honesty this thriller was more dramatic than anything else. This big budget soap opera was very slow in pace, drawn out relationship antics that held little to no originality as it tried to build tension. When it all came to a boil, the movie still couldn’t deliver the full power it promised, leading to sloppy excursions with characters that became surprisingly dumb or over assuming. Still, should you decide to catch this one in theaters, you have some nice settings and camera work to bring the movie up on the screen, and a little edge to get you through it. My recommendations are to rent this bad boy at home and get yourselves ready for the movies of the summer.
My scores:
Thriller: 5.0
Movie Overall: 4.0
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