Emperor's new clothes syndrome

Rating: 1/10 (16 September 2005)

On the back of all the good reviews I was looking forward to seeing this movie. What a disappointment!
It starts promisingly, with Matt Dillon taking the acting honours, but the movie relentlessly sets up a number of short stories that are all contrived to the point of ridiculousness, with each having a twist at the end. Even worse, the characters criss-cross each other's paths over the course of a day until the whole movie becomes a pretentious bore.
I learnt nothing about the nature of racism from this movie other than the fact that the screenwriter(s) and director manipulated the theme to set up a trite and insubstantial vehicle to make money out of the subject. Every character was shown to have a 'dark' and a 'light' side, like the world is black and white. Wouldn't it be great if racism were that simple?
I think that anyone leaving a comment about this movie should state what their ethnic origin is (I'm white European) so that readers can gauge the balance of reaction to this movie. I suspect that the majority of comments so far have come from shallow white folk who want to believe they understand the racism issue. They understand it as much as I do, but at least I can recognise my own failings and don't pretend that a cheap movie like Crash has any worth outside the world of entertainment.