Drug Running

Elias Koteas is renegade cop

in "Traffic"

By LINDA STASI, N.Y. Post

January 26, 2004 -- 'TRAFFIC," the much acclaimed British TV series, which became a much acclaimed (but incredibly dopey) movie, is now a much-acclaimed American miniseries.  USA Network has re-jiggered the story of DEA agents (or in the case
of Michael Douglas, the DEA head fed, of course) and how drugs get from there (wherever there is) to here.

Happily, this "Traffic" is a lot more realistic than the movie, in which Douglas's daughter went from experimenting with pot to becoming a crack house 'ho in 14 seconds flat.

USA's "Traffic" revolves around the world of all illegal trafficking - and how the bad guys deal not only in drugs, but viruses, weapons and even humans.

The way it's played out here (three, two-hour epsiodes) revolves around three characters whose lives are inadvertently and intractably tied together.

There's Mike McKay (Elias Koteas), a renegade DEA agent, working in Afghanistan; Ben Edmonds (Balthazar Getty), a Seattle MBA whose big-shot real estate deals all went south; and Adam Kadyrov (Cliff Curtis), a Seattle cab driver.

It's the way their lives intertwine that not only makes the miniseries riveting (and you better be riveted, because if you look away for 10 seconds, you'll be lost), but different from what you'd expect.

Mike, off in Afghanistan, connects with a serious bad guy, Fazal (Ritchie Coster). Mike promises to lead him to where the government-confiscated heroin (seized from the Taliban) is stored. In exchange, they split the profits once it's "trafficked" out of the country and
sold.

Meantime, Adam the cab driver finds out that his wife and daughter were killed (they were being illegally smuggled into the country) when their shakey ship sinks off the U.S. coast.

Into the mix is Ben, whose father, a Seattle garmento, has recently died. When Ben tries to clean up his father's debts, he discovers that Daddy was cooperating with the bad guys - and using his containers on ships to bring in everything from humans to weapons to
viruses.

Daddy's deal with Ronny Cho (Nelson Lee), a Chinese-American bad guy with connections all over the world, was a "don't ask/don't tell/just pay me" business. Ben wants in, too.

Meantime, when DEA agent Mike gets caught in the act in the badlands of Afghanistan, (has he really turned?), he tries to give up the info about how all of this trafficking (humans, viruses, heroin) is all tied together, but the US forces don't buy it.

His family back home - his wife, Carole (Mary McCormack), and son, Tyler (Justin Chatwin) - is suffering the after-effects.

Seduced by the hot teen next door (Eden Roundtree), Adam becomes involved, ironically, in Seattle's seamy drug culture.

I told you - look away and you're lost.

This could have turned into a puffy, dopey, lets-explain-every-single-plot-twist script, but it didn't. They assume viewers aren't too simple-minded to follow the action, not to mention the plot.

All the principals - particularly Chatwin, Lee, Koteas and Curtis -are fantastic. Best of all, the accents sound real for once.