Seen this a few times over the years and still remains a compelling multi-character drama with some fine performances all around. Also has some great visuals depending on the storyline. Not sure where I rank it amongst Soderbergh's other works (Ocean's 11 has the fun factory going for it) but still love it no matter how many times I've seen it. **4.5/5**

**Someone needs to go back to directing school** This gem of the millennium comes with a great story (which has been done countless times before and after), great actors (funny faced most of them), and very well done action. Unfortunately all is wasted on the terrible actual telling of that story and its people in action. We get weird colors, useless zoom ins, shots into nothing, a boring soundtrack, the whole thing stripped off any continuity and stretched to 2 hours 30 minutes. It is understandable the makers of this film wanted to underline the realism with a documentary style, but come on. Or maybe they just were on some of the drugs shown in the picture, or maybe, and that must be it, they wanted the audience to feel like they were on drugs. 9 June 2017 I am migrating my reviews from a different site which has become simply garbage. TMDB looks awesome and I look forward to be a part of it.

Remember when western governments went through their phases of appointing a “czar” for everything? They clearly didn’t recall just what happened to the last one of them, and to be fair to “Wakefield” (Michael Douglas) his chances of success trying to stop the trafficking of drugs from Mexico to the USA wasn’t much likelier to succeed. In many ways the application of this task is little better than an honour amongst thieves arrangement with his own DEA officers trying to take down the “Ayala” cartel whilst south of the Rio Grande, law enforcement has rules that are more akin to survival of the fittest. They do make a semblance of a breakthrough, though, when they manage to arrest “Carlos Ayala” (Steven Bauer) thanks to some sterling work from “Gordon” (Don Cheadle) and “Castro” (Luis Guzmán). What they haven’t quite bargained on, though, is that his hitherto largely unaware wife “Helena” (Catherine Zeta Jones) is determined to avoid ending up on skid-row with her son, and so decides to take up some of the slack in her husband’s nefarious business enterprise. Meantime, different methods are proving effective for “Rodriguez” (Benicio Del Toro) and his partner “Sanchez” (Jacob Vargas) who are just as unscrupulous when it comes to tracking down these culprits and their mules, and after some success find themselves embroiled in a much more perilous endeavour to bring down the kingpin…

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