Traffik

Y’know, if nothing else, at least I was given a reason to visit a new theatre, ’cause it was the closest to me that carried Traffik (with a K).

And I’m gonna keep calling it Traffik (with a K), even though it’s obviously spelled that way before your eyes, ’cause I honestly have no idea why they spelled it that way, aside from not wanting to be associated with Soderbergh’s 2000 Traffic — or, rather, Soderbergh, didn’t want people mistaking his better film for this one.  I’ve been wondering why it bears this spelling since the first time I saw the trailer a couple months ago, and haven’t found any reasons as of yet.  The search shall continue, though.  I’ll keep y’all posted.  (I can’t be the only one who’s curious, right?)

The story revolves around human trafficking — wait, human traffiking … there we go — and focuses on a young(-ish) couple, fairly happy, on the verge of being wed.  It’s the lady’s birthday, so her man delivers her gift (a rebuilt muscle car) and whisks her away to a palatial resort/vacation house (I’ll admit, I don’t get out much, and I don’t really know what this building is, aside from a place to go and stay for a while, and I don’t know how many people it can hold or normally holds, so…) in the middle of nowhere in what looks to be California’s Sierras.  Along the way, they get needlessly hassled by some biker types, and the lady winds up with a cell phone that’s not hers.  Turns out, it belongs to a human traffiking ring, one that involves the bikers (natch), and they want it back.  Insert a struggle for survival.

And, yeah, there’s actually a good amount of tension created here and there, especially during the bit when the bikers are hunting the couple down.  Said couple, Paula Patton and Omar Epps, do fairly well with their parts, even though, as per usual with the thriller genre, they do some eminently stupid things.  The message concerning the horrors and wide distribution of human traffiking and corruption is a strong one, making for a potentially powerful and meaningful film.  But.

Lemme emphasize the capital B there.

This thing, despite its strengths and potential, is a trash fire.  Aside from the leads, the acting is weak, exacerbated by a hackneyed, oversimplified, and clumsily overreaching script.  Writer/director Deon Taylor dips back into the absurdity of his Chain Letter with stock, one-note characters, ludicrous setups, simultaneously obvious and out-of-nowhere twists (if/when you see it, it’s clear as day, yet somehow mindboggling).  Though he often employs some solid camera movements and lenses that collapse the background, thus creating some tensely claustrophobic atmosphere, these flourishes are only there sometimes, leaving gaping holes in tension and feeling.  The emotions are turned up to melodramatic and histrionic levels from the get-go, as though the whole thing is a rather gritty episode of a soap opera.  Poor Roselyn Sanchez is given less than nothing to do in her nearly pointless role (if it weren’t for the end, she’d have done absolutely nothing of consequence, despite the focus put on her at times), and Bill Fichtner is forced to speak some horrifyingly stulted lines, especially in the Neil Breen-esque finale (check out the ending to Fateful Findings, and you’ll get the gist of this ending, only here the acting is better).

Worst of all, the tone doesn’t hold firm.  Sure, we get the idea that human traffiking is bad, as if we needed to be reminded of that, but the film doesn’t know how to properly structure itself to effectively communicate that idea.  The overly long first act really drives home the protagonists’ relationship (as well as the not-so-great relationship between their friends), even though this is fuck-all to do with anything.  I wanna say that the point is to say that anyone can be victims of human traffiking, regardless of station or stability or happiness or whatever, but this is a forced assumption on my part.  Then, during the second act, we get an admittedly nice-looking exploitation thriller, as the bikers and their cohorts hunt the couple down and whatnot.  There’s some bad acting, stock writing, and mounds of stupidity here, but it could work as a neo-exploitation flick, if only the rest of the film followed suit.  Then the third act goes into full-on preachy and absurd territory, ostensibly showing the dark horror of traffiking and the depth of corruption (this is linked with a story our main character is working on at the beginning, just kinda subtly ham-fistedly), but the writing and direction are so shoddy and overdone that the message gets lost in after-school-special territory.  They go so far as to play Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” over the scene of our character’s lowest point; this wouldn’t be so bad if the framing were so plain and if the song didn’t have a very specific meaning (it’s about lynching, not human traffiking or even slavery) with some very specifically evocative lyrics.  We’re thrown from odd romantic drama to exploitation action thriller to anti-traffiking PSA, and, believe you me, the mood and tone shift as abruptly as it sounds, leaving my brain with some interesting whiplash.  Only the second phase is done with any skill, and even that is tainted by an awful, hackjob of a script.

If this film were more cohesive and better-written, it might have hit a solid mark.  As it is, it’s too polished, too choreographed, and too uneven to have even a modicum of the heft the filmmakers were clearly aiming for.  In the end, nothing works, and you’re left shaking your head in bewilderment, especially after that ludicrously-staged and -written ending.  If a mixture of Breakdown, I Spit on Your Grave 2 – minus each film’s strengths – and the awful Megan Is Missing sounds intriguing, then it’s worth a go, but it’s ultimately not worth spending much money on; I’d wait for a rental, if you’re really into seeing it.