Human Traffic

This article is about the film. For Page 44 song, see Human Traffic (song).

Human Traffic
File:Human Traffic 1.jpg
Directed by	Justin Kerrigan
Written by	Justin Kerrigan
Produced by	Allan Niblo Emer McCourt
Starring	John Simm Lorraine Pilkington Shaun Parkes Danny Dyer Nicola Reynolds
Production companies	Fruit Salad Films Irish Screen
Distributed by	Renaissance Films, Metrodome Distribution, VCI, Miramax
Release date	1999
Running time	95m 21s (original UK) 84m 14s (US version)
Language	English
Budget	£340,000

Human Traffic is a 1999 British independent film written and directed by Welsh filmmaker Justin Kerrigan. The film has themes of coming of age, drug culture, club culture and relationships with numerous social and political commentary. The plot of the film revolves around five twenty-something friends, part of the "chemical generation", and takes place over the course of a sex and drug-fuelled weekend in Cardiff, Wales. The film is narrated by one of the stars, John Simm, and features numerous cameo appearances, and is also notable for being the film debut of Danny Dyer.

Produced on a budget of £340,000, the film was a financial success, taking in £2.5 million at the UK box office alone, and the film also enjoyed good VHS and DVD sales. Human Traffic was critically well-received with largely positive reviews, and has achieved cult status, especially amongst subcultures such as the rave culture.

Problems between Kerrigan and producer Allan Niblo ensured that a sequel never materialized, and Niblo's a 2004 DVD re-release of the film, Human Traffic: Remixed, was not well received.

Production

25-year-old Welsh filmmaker Justin Kerrigan wrote the film along with producer Allan Niblo, Kerrigan's teacher and "mentor" at film school. Kerrigan wanted the film to be as realistic as possible in depicting young people's lives in contemporary Britain, as well as realistically portraying drug culture and club culture, both walks of life in which Kerrigan had experience in. Kerrigan based much of the film on his own exploits, and eventually took over in a director capacity.

In an edition of UK gay lifestyle magazine Attitude, actor Danny Dyer spoke about the film being partly inspired by the 1999 BBC television drama Loved Up (which also featured an early appearance from Lena Headley), and which had similar themes to the film.

Much of the film was shot in Cardiff, where the film also takes place. Nina's workplace, a fictionalised McDonalds, was filmed at UCI 12 Cinemas, Atlantic Wharf Leisure Village, Hemingway Road. The public house during the Friday night scene was shot at Gassy Jacks, Salisbury Road, Cathays, Cardiff. The Emporium nightclub on Cardiff High Street was used as the exterior of the fictional "Asylum" club, and Club X on Charles Street stood in as the interior. The Philharmonic public house on St Mary Street is where the Sunday pub scene was filmed, and Jip and Lulu's Sunday night walk home was also filmed in St Mary's street.

There were rumors that Kerrigan and producer Allan Niblo fell out during filming.

Plot

"Moff" (Danny Dyer) is a twenty-year old cockney who moves from London to Cardiff, Wales with his parents when his policeman father is promoted to superintendent with South Glamorgan Police. Moff meets two other English lads at a warehouse rave; Jip (John Simm) and Black British lad Koop (Shaun Parkes), and also local girl Nina (Nicola Reynolds) whom Koop is dating, and Nina's best friend Lulu (Lorraine Pilkington). The five friends become very close, take drugs such as cannabis, ecstasy and cocaine, and "live for the weekend".

Moff secretly sells drugs to make a living and remains deliberately unemployed as there is "not enough hours in the day"; this causes friction with his family, especially his father who threatens to throw him out on the street. His increasing drug abuse also begins to mess with his head, taking priority over relationships and causing paranoia. Jip, who works in a clothes store, a job he hates, also begins to suffer from paranoia, as well as impotence caused by the fact his mother is a prostitute which preys on his mind. Nina, after messing up her college enrollment, gets a job at a McDonalds but promptly walks out after being sexually harassed by her boss. Lulu, who is at university, has had a long string of failed relationships. Koop, although having a steady job as a "vinyl pusher" at an underground record store, is not without his problems either: his father is in a psychiatric hospital, and he has issues with trusting girlfriend Nina.

The film follows the exploits of the five friends over the course of a single weekend, as well as various characters they meet along the way. They go to pubs and clubs on Friday, taking along Nina's 17-year old brother Lee, and Jip is forced to "blag" his way into the club as they are a ticket short. They crash a massive house party on the Saturday night, where Lulu and Jip eventually get together and have sex; Moff argues to a fellow partygoer that Star Wars is a drug fantasy — claiming that Yoda is always stoned — and Koop and Nina argue over her flirtatious behaviour. Moff eventually decides that his drug taking days are over, and Jip gets over his sexual paranoia thanks to the help of Lulu, somebody he has always secretly loved. The film ends with Jip and Lulu dancing in the street in a parody of love story films.

Themes

Alienation is presented as a significant theme of the film and is identified with the recreational drug culture which the film depicts. The family troubles of Jip, Koop and Moff are a strong cause for feelings of alienation. Jip's mother is a prostitute, and it is only at the end of the film when he has overcome his sexual paranoia (caused by former lovers he has had in the past) that he respects his mother as a woman and his mother, rather than just seeing her as a prostitute. Koop's father has been put in a home 'with all the other headcases' as after his wife left him, Koop's father invented himself an alternate reality in which 'our side' is constantly fighting 'their side'. Koop can no longer converse with his father about anything other than his fantasy world, and it is perhaps this experience that leads him to berate Nina later in the film. Moff still lives with his family and his father is a Police Officer (who was just recently promoted to superintendent). However, his theme is that he has no way of communicating with his family. At the end, Moff storms out shouting "who are you people?!". Such a lack of communication is fundamental to all three families represented here — Jip feels he cannot love his mother because of her profession, Koop cannot communicate with his mentally disabled father and Moff has grown up with people who have talked at him all his life (as represented by his using a remote control to fast forward and rewind their speech) and who have never talked with him.

Alienation is also expressed in terms of Jip's and Nina's employment. Jip works at a clothing retail outlet and is a 'slave to the wage'. He feels no passion for his work and feels forced into moral degradation by the need to earn money. In one scene used to demonstrate Jip's feelings for such a system he is shown being raped by his boss whilst having his mouth covered with a £20 note. Nina has similar misgivings about her job at a fast-food restaurant where all the employees are shown to move as if robots. She is harassed by her literally slimy boss and quits that day before going clubbing.

File:Human Traffic 2.jpg

Moff (Danny Dyer, right) discusses numerous alleged drug references contained in the Star Wars films with another partygoer (Richard Coyle)

Thus the drug taking of the ensuing weekend is represented as the extreme high that can overcome and make one forget one's unpleasant life, as well as letting the characters feel more intimate with each other (thanks to ecstasy) than they ever could as the alienated beings they are the rest of the week.

Some of these problems are resolved. Jip manages to make love to Lulu, overcoming his sexual paranoia, and in so doing being able to make up with his mother. Moff's Star Wars conversation made him feel connected with his fellow partygoer; however, even whilst he is having this conversation the comedown hits and he realises that he has said nothing and done nothing. The next day, he is distrustful of his friends, Jip et al., and decides that he can no longer carry on. He has been taking 'too much for too long'. One of the last scenes shows various cityscapes of Cardiff before slowly focusing on Moff walking alone to nowhere in particular having just stormed out of his house. Moff is the human traffic who has been left out by society; alienated by his family and his lack of job prospects all he has are his friends who, reluctantly support his decision to quit. Their reluctance of course stems from their own acknowledgment that they cannot continue this lifestyle forever either. However Moff soon forgets his troubles and laughs them off with a pint of vodka.

Jip concludes his narration by saying "We're all fucked up in our own way, y'know, but we're all doing it together. We're freestylin' on the buckle wheel of life, trapped in a world of internal dialogue. Like Bill Hicks said: 'It's an insane world, but I'm proud to be part of it.'"

Cast

• John Simm ... Jip
• Lorraine Pilkington ... Lulu
• Shaun Parkes ... Koop
• Danny Dyer ... Moff
• Nicola Reynolds ... Nina
• Dean Davies ... Lee
• Jan Anderson ... Karen Benson
• Terence Beesley ... Moff's Father
• Andrew Lincoln ... Felix

Cameo appearances

• When Jip first picks up Koop in his car, the DJ heard on the radio is Pete Tong, the film's musical adviser, who has a weekly radio show on BBC Radio 1.
• The manager of the Asylum club is played by prominent DJ Carl Cox.
• Director Justin Kerrigan appears in two scenes as "Ziggy Marlon", the Junglist dancer in Koop's record shop who asks, "Any new jungle in, guy?", and in a later scene driving with Ninas brother on their way to the house party.
• Jo Brand narrates the scene when Moff (Danny Dyer) is on the sofa hallucinating and losing touch with reality. Jo Brand, now a stand-up comedian, was previously a psychiatric nurse.
• Howard Marks appears and narrates the scene on "spliff politics". Marks was a famous cannabis smuggler turned "motivational speaker" and author who wrote his autobiography Mr Nice about cannabis smuggling.
• Bill Hicks is described as a "visionary" by characters in the film and features in one scene through archive footage.

Soundtrack

An important part of this film is the soundtrack; which includes some of the most famous dance music producers of the 1990s. These include Armand Van Helden, CJ Bolland, Fatboy Slim, Jacknife Lee, Pete Heller, Ferry Corsten, Carl Cox, Dillinja, Felix Da Housecat, Orbital, Aphrodite, Death in Vegas, Primal Scream, Liquid Child, Underworld, Age of Love, Energy 52, Brainbug and Lucid. Pete Tong was the film's musical advisor.

Reception

The film generated mostly positive reviews, garnering 62% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Film critic Colm Keaveny proclaimed this film to be Danny Dyer's "finest hour", and Irish critic James Murphy called Dyer's performance "truly remarkable".

Significance within drug culture

The film has become a cult hit in the rave scene. Although there is significant dialogue about drug use contained in the film (specifically MDMA (Ecstasy), marijuana, and one sarcastic discussion about heroin and crack cocaine), there is barely any visual representation of actual drug use in the film. The characters are never shown actually ingesting Ecstasy tablets. There are a few small scenes showing secondary characters smoking what is implied to be marijuana. The only drug use by main characters shown is a scene where Jip and Koop are having an intimate conversation at a house party and they are seen cutting up a line of a non-specific white powder. They are never actually shown snorting it, but nonchalantly rub it into their gums during a discussion. This is a marked difference in comparison to most movies about drug use and/or raves and such movies almost always show the main characters ingesting drugs on-screen.

American version

The version of the film released in the United States was heavily edited to remove certain British cultural references and terminology that it was presumably felt Stateside audiences would be unable to identify with or understand. These are mostly in the form of re-dubbed dialogue, such as Jip saying that he and Lulu "recently became dropping partners" being changed to "clubbing partners"; Nina's speech to the journalists in which she says she is looking forward to getting into some "hardcore Richard & Judy" becoming "hardcore Jerry Springer"; and Jip's allusion to Only Fools and Horses with "he who dares, Rodders," being rendered as "he who dares wins".

Other material was simply cut, including Lulu dumping her boyfriend; most of Koop's conversation with his father in the psychiatric hospital; and the 1991 "Summer of Love" flashback sequence — complete with glow sticks, dummies, whistles, dust masks, etc — possibly because America's "old school rave" period happened at a later date. As a result of various cuts, the US version runs to 84m 14s, compared to the original 99m 21s, losing just over 15 minutes of footage, in addition to the numerous re-dubs.

The Human Traffic — Remixed controversy

In October 2002 distributors VCI announced the DVD release — on the 21st of that month — of Human Traffic — Remixed, promising a "modernised" soundtrack with new contemporary (2002) tracks, previously cut scenes, and "state-of-the-art CGI effects." On 18 October The Guardian revealed that rather than being a "director's cut", it was the work of producer Allan Niblo, Kerrigan's tutor and "mentor" at film school. In fact Kerrigan only learnt about the project two weeks before the release was due. He explained: "I joke about it. How I signed over the copyright (to Niblo) for a pound and then never even saw the pound. When I finished I was £25,000 in debt. I've never made a penny from the film. Legally I don't have a leg to stand on, but I signed the contract because I was very naive and very broke. Now I'm just broke." No longer able to afford living in London, where he had moved after the film's release, Kerrigan was preparing to return to his native Cardiff. Although shot on a budget of £340,000 and UK box office taking of £2.5 million, Niblo maintained that the film had not made a profit, stating: "the investment is still unrecouped." John Simm was highly critical of the new release, describing it as "cynical exploitation" and complained of Niblo's attempts to get him to appear in a sequel when he hadn't been paid anything for the first film beyond a nominal fee. Simm said that he only appeared in the Human Traffic because of Kerrigan's involvement.

The Remixed version was not well received by fans of the original film, with many pointing to the fact that the new material was at the expense of removing footage previously included. In particular, Niblo removed from the titles all shots of the 1994 anti-Criminal Justice and Public Order Act demonstration and subsequent riot, which Kerrigan had included as an implicit political statement.

See also

• Trainspotting

External links

• Human Traffic at the Internet Movie Database
• Human Traffic at Rotten Tomatoes
• Human Traffic at AllMovie