Like drugs? Like drugs a lot? See 'Traffic.'

From street dealers to wealthy cartel heads, Steven Soderbergh's Traffic chronicles the pervasive drug trade and our government's ineffectual attempts to curb it. Based on the 1980s British television miniseries TRAFFIK, the American film version quickly travels from blistering Tijuana, Mexico, to cool Washington, D.C. with stopovers in certain affluent suburbs of Cincinnati and San Diego. In a style best described as docudrama-narration, three main stories unwind, entwine, and ultimately converge in one of the better films I have seen in a long time.

COURTESY USA PICTURES Corrupt Mexican police, judges with rich, freebasing daughters, and disillusioned DEA agents: the anti-anti-drug.

The action begins when Mexican police Javier (Benicio del Toro) and Manolo (Jacob Vargas), two mildly corrupt defenders of the law, manage to land themselves in the company of General Salazar (Tomas Milian), Mexico's alleged drug czar. Meanwhile, Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas), an Ohio Supreme Court Justice, has been named to the president's cabinet as the new, legitimate anti-drug spokesperson, unaware that his daughter Caroline (Erika Christensen) and her private-school buddies—including one played with gawky glee by Topher Grace from That '70s Show—have been experimenting with a whole lot more than marijuana. Caroline reads to the blind, plays volleyball, is a National Merit Finalist, and still manages to find time to freebase cocaine.

Hundreds of miles from Caroline's extracurriculars, DEA agents Montel Gordon (Don Cheadle) and Ray Casto (Luis Guzmán) turn a trafficking bust into an immunity deal in exchange for the damaging testimony of local drug dealer Eduardo Ruiz (Miguel Ferrer) against San Diego "businessman" Carlos Ayala. Ayala's wife Helena (Catherine Zeta-Jones), initially unaware of her husband's true occupation, barely pauses before substituting for her husband while he is in jail.

It is during the breakdown of the Wakefield family that Traffic's anti-drug sentiments resonate most strongly. In the Ayala storyline, family necessity obscures morality, while the Javier scenes center on the effect of the narcotics trade on one individual. Drugs infiltrate a white, affluent America in irrevocable denial of its own drug use.

The film's credibility is strengthened by Stephen Gaghan's exceptionally sharp script. For instance, when one of Caroline's high-achieving pals overdoses, the immediate response is, "He can't die on the floor, his parents are in Barbados!" Also, Soderbergh's use of special filters give each location a different feel. The look of the film changes as the stories progress and move together. The city scenes in Tijuana and the surrounding Mexican countryside are shot with a tawny polish that offsets the chilly blues found in D.C. hallways or Cincinnati neighborhoods. San Diego swaggers in warm, radiant light.

Traffic's flaws are few and harmless. It runs two hours and 20 minutes, but one barely notices. When it comes to the closing scenes, Soderbergh verges on syrupy rhetoric à la Robert Zemeckis. But, ultimately his ending provides the right closure for a film about the violence, power, and danger of the narcotics trade. Watch out for cameos by real-life politicians, judges, customs officials, and Hollywood stars like Salma Hayek, Edward Norton, and Benjamin Bratt who, as the head of the Tijuana cartel, engages in fancy work with children's toys that would make Mattel proud.

Soderbergh is Hollywood's current golden boy. With Traffic, he applies the same craftsmanship seen in Out of Sight. Traffic is an engrossing anti-drug film, and the surrounding hype is certainly well deserved.

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