TRAFFI(C) (K) JAM.

• Position: Review

Hollywood has been cannibalizing other sources practically since the first silent films flickered across the screen. Books, plays, radio programs, and foreign movies have all been adopted for American motion picture duty. It was inevitable once television showed up that it, too, would prove grist for the Tinseltown mill. Besides baby boomer producers spinning off big-screen versions of their favorite childhood shows, a number of major award-winners have their roots in the box in the living room, including "Marty," "Twelve Angry Men," "Judgment at Nuremberg," and "The Fugitive." This year's Academy Awards provided a variation on the theme.

Traffic (USA Home Entertainment, 147 minutes, $26.98) captured Oscars for best director (Steven Soderbergh), supporting actor (Benicio Del Toro), film editing, and adapted screenplay. The latter award stemmed from the film's source--a 1989 British miniseries that ran well over five hours and was seen on Public Television's "Masterpiece Theatre." The 2000 American version threw in a big cast (Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Dennis Quaid, Don Cheadle, and Del Toro); switched the European, Pakistani, and German locations to the U.S. and Mexico; and simplified the TV version, necessitated in part because it only had half the length of screen time to work with. The result is more concentration on the interdiction of drug trafficking than on the growth of opium poppies and their processing into heroin along a twisted trail from Pakistan to Europe.

This is not to say the American edition isn't gripping--it is, and well-warranted its best picture Oscar nomination. It benefits from being on DVD, allowing viewers to go back and take another look at some of the double-crosses and other plot twists that are sometimes missed on first watching. Soderbergh's decision to shoot scenes in different tints depending on the action's location--i.e., sun-bleached brown for Mexico, icy blue for Washington--is as annoying on the small screen as it was on the big one, but the movie is powerful enough to...