Traffic looks like the Oscar best-picture front-runner, and so does Soderbergh, for best director. But long after everyone has forgotten who won the statues, it will be remembered as one of film's most stylish and electrifying wake-up calls.

I don't see this slightly better-than-average drug thriller, with slightly better-than-average direction by Steven Soderbergh, as anything more than a routine rubber-stamping of genre reflexes. full review

The promise of Sex, Lies, and Videotape has been fulfilled. full review

Director Steven Soderbergh is riding one of the hottest streaks in the movie world. full review

Soderbergh's jazzed stylistics can be smartly entertaining. Without them, an uneven movie like Traffic might seem more of a melange than it already is. full review

It leaves one feeling restless and dissatisfied. full review

A real cannonball, a hardass drama about the drug trade that Steven Soderbergh directs like a thriller -- it comes out blazing.

[Soderbergh] is inventing a new visual vocabulary to make us feel we aren't watching a star, we aren't watching a movie; we are watching something real. Very real.

In compelling terms, it puts bitter economic, social and racial truth before our eyes. Continue to blink or see. Your choice. full review

A blistering, thought-provoking modern masterpiece. full review

Don't avoid Traffic. It takes you to the most amazing places.

Traffic sometimes has the impact of a tense war film or a grittily modernist, post- Godfather crime epic such as Heat or Goodfellas. full review

Smart, risky entertainment. full review

The movie's scope is breathtaking, delivering the most expansive portrait of the illegal narcotics trade ever put on film.

Walk straight and steady into Steven Soderbergh's dizzying drug drama Traffic and minutes later you'll feel as woozy as if you had fallen into one of Wonderland's smokiest sinkholes.

A huge canvas of a movie that nonetheless brings the various facets of drug trafficking -- and drug-taking -- down to human scale.

With Traffic, his most ambitious and complex film to date, Soderbergh again proves himself one of our most inventive filmmakers. full review

Traffic is the kind of movie that will probably age rather quickly, but right now, in the first month of the new year and the second year of the new millennium, it resonates in the present tense. full review