Crashing and Burning

Rating: 4/10 (25 June 2020)

Another film on the quest for the 2005 Oscar's badge. "Crash" was a controversial choice for Best Picture at the time beating the heavily favoured "Brokeback Mountain". Since then "Crash" stock has increasingly fallen and is regularly ranked as one of the worst films to have won the Best Picture Oscar. If I'm honest, I can see why.
Exploring the race relations of Los Angeles over a three day period. "Crash" centres of various exchanges between amongst others, a racist cop Ryan (Matt Dillion) and his interactions with TV Director Cameron (Terrence Howard) and his wife Christine (Thandie Newton). Elsewhere, a District attorney (Brendon Fraser) tried to appear on the side of law and order, whilst simultaneously keeping the black community on his side. Meanwhile, Persian Immigrant Farhad (Shaun Toub) purchases a gun to help protect his store from robbers.
The trouble with the film is, despite I think generally trying to do good and explore prejudices that exist it's just so heavy handed in its approach. Several times characters literally monologue about their feelings on race relations in such a way that nobody speaks or has conversations in real life. The story is actually reasonably clever, as the vignettes crossover and some of the reveals that come later in the film are pretty good but I'm not sure any of the character arcs actually earn the redemption the film acts like they do, particularly Matt Dillon's character.
The performances are, as you might expect from the wealth of talent involved, really good. It did make me wonder why Chris Bridges doesn't do more serious acting, or at least be given more to do in the "Fast and Furious" movies, because he's excellent here. But on a technical level the film isn't particularly well made, perhaps because Paul Haggis is a much better writer than he is a director. Shot composition is amateurish and the music selections are jarring. There is a moment towards the end of the film that is supposed to be the emotional gut punch, which is hilariously undermined by a zoom on Michael Pena's face.
As I said, I think at its heart the film is trying to do good and stimulate the conversation but the race situation around the world is too important to award points, and Oscars, for effort.