Human Traffic is the Brit rave film, in which five kids desperately drop Ecstasy and bounce to the beat before they're too old to do it anymore.
Leading the charge is Jip (John Simm), a nice enough guy who loves his friends, but has a problem with intimacy when it really counts. Backing him up are LuLu (Lorraine Pilkington), the student who's been burned by men; Koop (Shaun Parkes), the braided deejay-wannabe, with jealousy issues; Nina (Nicola Reynolds), a chubby Natalie Wood and Koop's girlfriend; and Moff (Danny Dyer), the baby-faced party-guy burning it at both ends.
What the five have in common is living in a dead-end town with dead-end jobs (save Moff, who refuses to be miserable by working). They all live for the weekend and the raves and Ecstasy -- the rest of life is just something to endure until it's quitting time on Friday.
Human Traffic, written and directed by Justin Kerrigan, is a light comedy that acknowledges the pointless meandering of the five, but with a kids-will-be-kids, it's-harmless-fun sort of wink. From time to time, Kerrigan goes off on tangents for a bit of comic flair -- a smoking ass, the politics of passing a joint. Through it all, Kerrigan manages to explore nothing new about his young people and those like them. He dabbles in serious topics (some of the characters have real troubles), but never lets them evolve. As a result, Human Traffic is a flimsy document that kids always, and always will, just want to have a good time.
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