Crash is a non-LA persons view of LA.

Rating: Null/10 (2 March 2006)

I've lived in LA for 13 years of my young adult life, on the Westside and also in depressed neighborhoods near downtown (Echo Park, home of the Rampart Division scandal and previously the precinct with the highest murder rate in the US) and I have to say that this is not the LA that I know. In watching the film it looks like some non-Californian's, non-LA person's perspective on race relations in LA. The characters are exaggerations, the overwhelming focus on black/white relations obscures the multi-racial fabric of the LA landscape, and the Asian characters (eg. one is smuggling Chinese illegal aliens, and another is screaming racial epithets) are the worst kind of stereotyping. The only portrayal in the film that is accurate is of the corrupt cops, which as anyone who lived through the Rodney King years 1992 will tell you are all too real. But then the film turned around and offered redemption for that bastard cop by allowing him to rescue the same woman he molested/raped? What kind of crap is this! That's not even counting the stylistic choices made in the film to try to make LA look like Chicago and New York, with people wearing scarves and such and having it snow in the city (as if that would ever happen!). People in LA rarely ever wear scarves, because it is rarely that cold, and the way they made the characters do this shows that this film is made about other cities in the US, and only used LA as the background because of the controversial nature of the 1992 riots.
I would have to say that based on my experiences in LA I have seldom seen people engage in outright racial slurs, because they know they will get beat down pretty quickly. Additionally, for Angelenos who have grown up in local multiracial high schools, the mere fact that people grow up living next to and learning with people of many different types encourages greater understanding of difference. If there are racial issues at certain local high schools, they are more often caused by gang conflict over turf issues than by internal prejudice. Maybe the racial dynamics mentioned in the film hold for people in other cities, but they're not walking the same streets, riding the same buses, and talking to the same people in the community as I have. In fact, I would argue that the biggest problems are caused by all the starry eyed hillbillies that move to LA from places outside of California and bring their prejudices with them. This movie is terrible, and the fact that people have made a big fuss about it is evidence of how out of touch people are with LA.