The Role of Heroin in the Movie
Drug czar Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas) pretty much sums up this Activity Focus E-Mail for me when he says "It's hard to fight a war when the enemy is your own family" after he realizes that his 16-year-old daughter Caroline is graduating from recreational drug use to habitual abuse - a secret that Wakefield's wife, Barbara, has been keeping from him. I would argue that Caroline was not necessarily the enemy per se, but she could be viewed in this movie as a pawn of Robert Wakefield's true enemy - the illegal drug trade.
As well, although the movie follows parallel storylines involving very dissimilar characters with equally dissimilar objectives - while demonstrating how drugs affect every single one of them on some level or another - the film does not take an obviously specific political stance with regard to the production, distribution, and consumption of drugs - thereby avoiding general moral issues relating to addiction. - Soderbergh does not overtly place the blame for Caroline's addiction on anybody but Caroline. In other words, although I believe that the movie firmly establishes that the illegal drug trade is a problem affecting everyone - and explores a diverse set of characters who are either fighting against drugs or fighting for drugs, either supplying drugs or consuming drugs, etc. no Roger Ebert, but one aspect of the film that I particularly appreciated was that, while the movie clearly depicts the devastating consequences of Caroline's deepening addiction (consequences not only for herself but also for her family), director Steven Soderbergh refuses to blatantly condemn any particular character for Caroline's downfall. However, during the movie I was able to sympathize with Caroline rather than privately rebuke or reprove her. For example, Caroline evokes a forceful acknowledgment of the wasteful and destructive power of drugs - she was the third-ranked student in her junior class at an exclusive private high school, yet once caught in the web of addiction, she becomes a thief and a prostitute to support her habit. I think Soderbergh deserves credit (along with Erika Christensen, who portrays Caroline) for portraying the addict as a sick person, rather than as an evil one.
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Roger Ebert,
Erika Christensen,
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drug trade,
illegal drug,
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