Review of Human Traffic (1999) by Paul V — 24 May 2015

"The weekend has landed...".

This movie (a writer/director debut I believe) focuses on a group of five friends Jip (John Simm), Lulu (Lorraine Pilkington), Nina (Nicola Reynolds), Koop (Shaun Parkes) and Moff (Danny Dyer). Here we have been invited to join them on a 48 hour trip into the club culture of the naughty nineties.

Set in Cardiff we experience our new friend's everyday problems ranging from sexual paranoia, possessive behaviour and family issue. We see how they slave through their boring, soul crushing Monday-Friday jobs in pursuit of the ultimate buzz of the weekend which for them is their escape from it all those drug fuelled nights of freedom. Human Traffic gives us a view of the club culture from the club youths perspective with Pete Tong supplying the soundtrack which helps creating the right tempo for the movie.

The quirkiness is what I liked most about Human Traffic as well as the originality of it all. The cinematography was used to portray the characters inner most thoughts/feelings (Cinema and clothes store scene in particular) I loved these! I really enjoyed being in the characters heads and the way these scenes were shot really translated their feelings across well. With laughs constant throughout (my personal favourite is the Star Wars discussion, this had me laughing out loud) and joyfully quotable scenes! I do wonder as to how this hadn't crossed my radar before.

To me though I feel it's important for the audience to get some closure at the end of a film, I didn't like the fact I was introduced to these likable characters and shown their everyday problems but not actually see them over coming or falling to them. The movie just ended abruptly without giving me any closure.

"NICE ONE BROTHER!".