Crash is a Wreck

Rating: 4/10 (25 November 2007)

In Crash, Director Paul Haggis goes Altmanesque with this garbled attempt to discuss bigotry in contemporary LA. Overall it lacks Altman's energy and offers up gross cliché characters instead of quirky originals. Crash begins to go into its spin right after Detective Weathers (Don Cheadle) sums up the "City of Angels" populace in the first line of the film. "In LA nobody touches you. We're all behind glass and metal. Sometimes I think we crash into each other just so we can feel something." We are then introduced to a full cast of impatient, ill tempered Angelinos of all stripe and persuasion connected in some way to make life miserable for each other. There's the bigoted cop, the successful "Uncle Tom" black, the Asian trafficking in human cargo, the hard working Latino, the misunderstood Persian and gang banger of principle. It's LA as a microcosm of the world, Hollywood style.
The enemy is ourselves seems to be the message as Crash's one dimensional characters snarl at each other from start to finish with occasional moments of insight and exposed vulnerability as they spend scene after scene reciting well worn bigoted archaisms that have been around for decades. When Haggis runs out of these he goes into music video mode with a solemn track playing over a montage of Crash's hapless citizens looking dutifully glum.
Serious as it attempts to be Crash is a rather vapid message picture with a couple of incendiary scenes connected by preposterous coincidence that patronizes its token cast when its not busy spitting stilted racist venom. It's a five car pile-up.