Tuesday, May 31 2005

NBC MOVIE OF THE WEEK --(8:00PM-11:00PM) --(TV-14)

"Traffic (Viewer Discretion Advised)"

From Steven Soderbergh comes this wildly exhilarating exploration of the complex, multilayered international drug problem. Telling three seemingly disparate stories that loosely intersect and overlap, unfurling at a frantic, relentless pace. In the first, a well-intentioned Mexican police officer, Javier Rodriguez Rodriguez (Benicio Del Toro), comes face-to-face with the hypocrisy and hopelessness of his situation after he learns that his superior, General Salazar (Tomas Milian), isn't the law-abiding officer he claims to be. In the second, Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas), a conservative Supreme Court judge from Ohio, takes a position as the president's new drug czar, while at the same time slowly becoming aware of his teenage daughter, Caroline (Erika Christensen) addiction. Finally, federal agents Montel Gordon (Don Cheadle) and Ray Castro (Luis Guzm�n) are baby-sitting Eduardo Ruiz (Miguel Ferrer), a drug smuggler who is about to testify against the wealthy Carlos Ayala (Steven Bauer), only to have Ayala's pregnant wife, Helena (Catherine Zeta-Jones), takes her family's future into her own hands.