CRASH (Paul Haggis, 2005)

I haven't watched this yet, but I own the DVD.

The reason I didn't, is probably because it looks like an ordinary film that just wants to moralize its audience against racism. From the outside it doesn't really look like it has anything to offer besides that.

Did anyone have this feeling after watching it or should I give it a go?

I saw Crash when it first came out. Based on my memory of it, yes, racism is a large theme in the movie - but what is interesting is the way the movie integrates a number of parallel stories to show that actions by the various characters have knock-on effects for the others.

Lots of very good performances by a great ensemble cast. Matt Dillon's sticks out in my mind.

Since you already have it, give it a go.

It heavily involves racism, and it definitely is against racism, but it doesn't beat that message into the ground. Most of the characters are racist, in some respect, and a lot of the time they are actually proven right, but they are proven wrong a fair number of times. It stays away from being preachy that way, and it keeps it feeling realistic by not being too one-sided.

I don't understand what you mean. Could you give examples of the characters being 'proven right and wrong'?

Edit: Do you mean they are right or wrong in their racist assumptions about each other?

I was a sucker for the intermingling of the characters and how the overall story comes together. It's definitely a formiddable film to me, anyways.

I mean that the characters were constantly stereotyping other races, and sometimes those stereotypes actually played out in front of them, for whatever reason. Then sometimes they hurt someone because of their racism.

*Possible Spoilers*

For instance, in the beginning when Sandra Bullock and Brendan Fraser are walking, and they are intimidated by the two black people walking down the street. Normally, you would expect a movie to make them completely wrong, and make the black people great guys. But in reality, the two black guys steal their car. They were actually right in their racist assumption.

Then an example of someone being wrong in their racist assumption would be the scene towards the end, with the young cop and one of the black guys, but I won't spoil that scene, because that's the most important scene in the movie.

CRASH was a breathtaking and undeniably powerful motion picture that moved some, angered others, and has probably caused more impassioned debate than any film of the last 10 years.

This Oscar winner for Best Picture is an unsettling, imaginative, and quietly accurate examination at the very touchy subject of race relations and how, in some very subtle ways, we really haven't made much progress in this area since the 1960's. This film rattled cages everywhere because it shined a light on behaviors in this country that we want to believe don't exist but have really just been quietly shoved in the closet and almost out of sight. This film angered a lot of people because it's unflattering to us and shows a side of us that we would rather believe doesn't exist but I defy anyone who sees this extraordinary film not to find one character or event that they can relate to, have seen something similar occur, or know someone in their own lives who is like a character in this film.

Many have criticized this film for conveying the ugliness of prejudice and bigotry with a sledgehammer but I disagree. Paul Haggis' superb Oscar winning screenplay weaves a tapestry of story and character that never punches you in the face. Instead it haunts your conscious with its powerfully quiet indictment of our own inner demons that we had forgotten about.

This film traces 24 hours in the lives of several disparate characters in downtown Los Angeles where the separate events these people experience shed a different light on this still highly sensitive issue.

The cast is uniformly superb...Don Cheadle plays a police detective whose investigation into a dirty cop's death finds him in a position of compromising an investigation through reverse discrimination while dealing with a drug-addicted mother, a hoodlum younger brother and a latino partner/girlfriend (Eva Mendes). Chris "Ludacris" Bridges does a star-making a turn as an intelligent LA thug who loves to blast white Los Angeles for the deplorable way they treat black people while carjacking a political candidate and his wife, played by Brendon Frasier and Sondra Bullock. Bullock is surprisingly effective in a very unsympathetic role. Terrence Howard is brilliant as black TV producer who is humiliated during a traffic stop involving a bigoted cop (Matt Dillon, Best Supporting Actor Nominee)going a little too far with his girlfriend (Thandie Newton)has him questioning his manhood and taking the law into his own hands when Bridges also tries to carjack him, not to mention a reconnection between Dillon and Newton that provides one of the film's most powerful moments.

Mention should also be made of Ryan Phillippe as a sympathetic cop who finds out he's not as liberal as he thought and Larenz Tate as Bridges' running partner. And don't miss the "Magic Cloak" scene...one of the single most moving scenes in the history of cinema. It's not fun, it's not flattering, and it's not easy to watch, but CRASH is an important and beautifully crafted look at an armpit of our society which we would like to think no longer exists.