One of the better movies I have seen in 2005.

Rating: Null/10 (23 October 2005)

I actually saw 'Crash' twice, on successive days. The first time alone, the second time with my wife. It is the type of movie that can get even better the second or third time. Movies this good and this intelligent come along very rarely.
It has an all-star cast, but my favorites were Don Cheadle as the LA police detective who didn't seem to worry quite enough about his younger brother, played by Larentz Tate. And Matt Dillon as the frustrated patrol officer who seemed bigoted beyond redemption. And Terrence Howard as the director who was trying hard to straddle the white/black line.
In the opening Cheadle's character says something about people never touching each other in LA, and they want human contact so badly that they end up crashing into each other. The movie opens with a crash, and ends with a different crash. But to me the movie was about something else. It is about the dual lives most people live, the one where we do what we are expected to do, and the other where we do things under stress which represents who we really. Many times during the movie this is played out as some type of bigotry, against blacks or whites, against Asians or middle easterns. The dialog is frank, and the story seldom leads where you think it will. That's what makes it so interesting.
The whole movie is over about a 24-hour period. During this time most of the characters come into contact with each other in convoluted ways which probably could never happen in real life, but makes an interesting way to show the ironies of life, how the hurter can become the helper, or vice versa.
BIG SPOILERS FOLLOW. Police officer stops a couple, finds nothing wrong, dislikes attitude, humiliates woman with a 'personal' search up her evening dress. Later has to cut the same woman out of an overturned car to save her before it explodes. Hispanic locksmith is thought to be a gang member, white woman thinks he will give keys to home boys, also Iranian man thinks he was cheated, Hispanic man turns out to be a family man with wife and young daughter, Iranian man looks him up to shoot him, daughter gets in way as shot fired, all are OK because gun had blanks. Car thieves run over Chinese man, who they dump off at a hospital, later Chinese wife shows up, he tells her to get check from his wallet and cash it quickly, turns out he was smuggling Tiwanese in the back of his van.
March 2013 edit: Just watched it again, I believe it comes across even better now.
July 2015 edit: Just watched it again, I am still amazed what a fine movie this is, every character is written and acted just right.