steven soderbergh's TRAFFIC (2000)

there's few working directors in Hollywood that can really hold a candle to Soderbergh so far as sheer effortlessness goes. he stumbles, sure, and occasionally falls, but along the way he's developed a healthy swagger rocking back and forth between art and commerce, always to differing degrees. Traffic is one of the films he'll be remembered for, and its staggering balance between ambition and entertainment is as good a reason as any why. in many ways it's an activist film, but said activity lays simply in decrying pragmatism... it very smartly doesn't purport to offer any answers, and as such reveals perhaps its true preoccupation, more universal in nature: if we truly desire progress, we must learn to admit it when we're wrong.