An exploration of the United States of America's war on drugs from multiple perspectives. For the new head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the war becomes personal when he discovers his well-educated daughter is abusing cocaine within their comfortable suburban home. In Mexico, a flawed, but noble policeman agrees to testify against a powerful general in league with a cartel, and in San Diego, a drug kingpin's sheltered trophy wife must learn her husband's ruthless business after he is arrested, endangering her luxurious lifestyle.
"No one gets away clean"
Top Billed Cast
Michael Douglas
Robert Wakefield
Benicio del Toro
Javier Rodriguez
Catherine Zeta-Jones
Helena Ayala
Erika Christensen
Caroline Wakefield
Don Cheadle
Montel Gordon
Jacob Vargas
Manolo Sanchez
Miguel Ferrer
Eduardo Ruiz
Luis Guzmán
Ray Castro
Detailed Critic & Audience Reviews
J JPV852Verified TMDB Critic
2021-04-12
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**...
5 5rJoudVerified TMDB Critic
2021-07-04
**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...
C CinemaSerfVerified TMDB Critic
2025-08-16
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 ...
