A stereotypical script that ruins great acting and cinematography

Rating: 6/10 (26 March 2006)

After the latest awards, I was really excited to go rent "Crash", which I had missed in the theater, and having recently become interested in the various films that explore the modern demographic fractal of Los Angeles.
The story tries to follow 8 main characters that interweave through a day in Los Angeles, and there is some excellent acting, with actors playing against type. Don Cheadle, Sandra Bullock and Matt Dillon all put in fine performances that deserved more publicity, and Ludicrous makes an impressive acting debut. The lighting is great and a pleasure to watch.
It's just to bad the story and dialogue are so horrid. Every incident is pulled from a "racial dynamics 101" after-school special, with none of the subtlety and tension that underlies the real interplay between race, ethnicity and class in modern America. It comes across as a film about diversity and conflict as written by a white liberal who has never experienced any of these incidents, nor really knows someone who has.
By the middle of the movie, it's lost any sense of surprise, it's an interplay of stereotypes rather than characters, and it leaves no sense of tension. The one surprise for me involved the incident between the Hispanic family and the Persian store owner, and since that was my one surprise, I spoil it for you.
By it's end it was rather tedious, and I can't believe that this film won Best Picture unless the other candidates just stank. It's a real shame that this ones and "A History of Violence" (good - not great), wasn't even nominated.
Watch it for curiosity, but don't expect a good movie. For a movie that explores modern Los Angeles, Collateral was actually a superior film (but I guess thrillers don't get nominated)