Crash Has Little Impact

Rating: 3/10 (2 April 2006)

I found Paul Haggis' Crash (no, not the kinky and perverse car wreck fetish film of the same name) to be a routine look at racism and prejudice in Los Angeles with some genuinely touching moments. It had an interesting ensemble cast and reminded me of a patchy Robert Altman film because the story is told in an episodic series of vignettes. Race hate, police brutality, and prejudice has been thoroughly examined in cinema before, more successfully so in Matthieu Kassovitz's La Haine (Hate). Crash just reeks of "can't we all just get along?" preachiness. Throughout the entire film, I couldn't help thinking this was a 'message movie,' with all the complexity and character dimension of an after-school special. With its stereotypical cookie cutter characters, Crash tirelessly beats us over the head with its anti-racism themes, as if we hadn't figured it out in the first ten minutes. What's really frustrating is that this movie had the potential to be so much more. Instead of offering any new insight into the diversity of cultures in America's 'melting pot,' it reinforces its stale stereotypes into action, so that they are mere puppets serving to teach us all a lesson. Thandie Newton and Don Cheadle give fine performances, as ever, but they have so little screen time we don't get to care too much about their characters. They're just there to represent their race and then disappear once the script has discarded them. With its depiction of everyone trashing each other and the tag line, "You think you know who you are. You have no idea," what exactly is Crash trying to say? Is it implying that everyone is bigoted, full of hate, and glaring with suspicion at our neighbors? That we'd blame the Middle Eastern grocery clerk if our receipt read wrong? Because I tend to disagree. I think this film came out at just the right time. After 9-11, it's very topical. A lot of people are going to praise it simply because of it's seemingly positive message of tolerance in a world constantly waging war. I was highly surprised when the Academy Award nominations were announced because I considered this a very minor film. I think it could have done better. I do like to give credit where it's due, so I will say Crash had some very winning scenes: the intense moment where bad cop Dillon pulls Newton out of the flaming wreckage of her car and she is forced to entrust her life to him, and the story about the little girl protecting her daddy from the bullet. Other than that, it read like a propaganda pamphlet for an overzealous activist group with no real aim or solution.