Moralities in "traffic"

Moralities in "Traffic"

The movie "Traffic" (directed by Steven Soderbough) dealt with many different moral issues presented to many Americans today. Protecting one's family was a big moral issue that was touched many times in the movie, it is actually how one goes about protecting their family is where morals would come in. There were three different stories that interweaved during the course of the movie; the three stories are divided by main characters which are an oblivious housewife, a powerful senator, and lastly a straightforward cop.

Catherine Zeta-Jones' character 'Helena', who is the housewife and lives a posh southern Californian lifestyle; she probably deals with the most moral defeating decisions in the movie. First Helena son's life is threatened by drug lords, because Helena's husband owes them three million dollars in drug money. The first moral decision she faces here is will she continue on her husband's drug business and save or child's life or go to the police and jeopardize her husband going to jail, living a honest poor lifestyle, and the possibility of the life of her and her son. She understandably chooses the former so she can keep both her posh lifestyle and her son.

Helena's second moral defeating decision is when she decides to take somebody else's life. Her husband is taken to jail on drug charges, and that star witness threatens to keep him there. So when she was dealing with the drug lords for the three million, she tells them to hire a contract killer to kill the star witness. She ultimately ends up succeeding, but at the cost of a police detective's life.

Lastly Helena deals with a somewhat minor, when compared with her other decisions; this is the situation when she introduces a new type of cocaine. First she introduces the cocaine to a successful drug cartel, which one would conclude as immoral. Second the cocaine that she does introduce is very dangerous in the sense that it was very pure and drug sniffing dogs could not detect it. This means that more cocaine would be introduced into the American market, and will bring much more crime and death into the American society.

Helena dealt with the most ethical situations in the movie and she chose the 'immoral' decisions. However how can one say she was immoral? In my opinion she is immortal, however in her eyes she thought she was doing the best for her family, which in turn in her mind justifies her decisions. What confuses me is that Helena does not seem at all regretful in her decisions. She has this good mom-gone bad persona, with a dose of fear mixed in. I have no idea what I would do if I was in her position, I would probably go through some sort of legal way of getting the three million ie: loans.

Another story in the movie deals with a senator that