Puppet show

Rating: 5/10 (27 October 2005)

I normally don't comment on films, but this one really disappointed me enough that I have to say something in response to all the 10-star reviews on here. Way too often in "Crash" we see characters doing or saying things for one and only one reason--because the director needs them to get themselves into situations that he desires later in the film. You can very easily see it--characters are inconsistent throughout. One minute they're complete jerks and the next they're sweet or heroic. One minute they're funny, the next they're philosophical. First they're meek, the next they're aggressive. Yes, real people have multiple sides to their personalities, but they don't swing nearly as far or as fast as the characters in "Crash". You can just see the writer pulling their strings like marionettes. Another well-known screenwriter (JMS) once contemplated how his characters often surprised him by doing things he didn't expect. That is good writing. What we have here are characters with no minds of their own; they are mere extensions of the writer's fingers, manipulating the story (and the viewer) for his whims. Problem is, I don't happen to like being manipulated. In a good film, characters stay consistent, react realistically, speak using real English, and actually have a sense of self- preservation (trying not to get shot, for example.) A truly good film would have been less heavy-handed, less forced, less didactic, and way less coincidental.