All this praise for what again?

Rating: 5/10 (11 February 2006)

I don't know how people in their right minds are fooled by this poor display of art imitating life. Wasn't that the filmmakers agenda? To show us a splice of life, help us to see our ways as a society? If that was the objective, then the filmmakers must've lost their way right after the outline stage of the screenplay development process.
First of all, this has to be one of the most overrated films in the history of American cinema. What is that about? Doesn't mean that the film is the worse. It just doesn't deserve to be this flawless mediator of some kind that is capable of initiating open dialogue about the race issue in America. It's indeed a terribly flawed film with little or no respect for the collective intelligence and the imagination of the viewing audience.
It fails at character, where they're all paper thin caricatures of different individuals in urban America. Thugs that do nothing but debate about "white America's" hold on blacks. Whites that do nothing more than talk about how minorities bring down the nation, making it hard for decent white folk to live in their own cities or town. I mean, couldn't the characters be approached from a more original angle? And let's not forget the typical, racist, white, "ni**er hating" cop characters. I guess it failed because it was an ensemble with about two hours to tell all of the character's stories. In doing so, the story didn't allow for the characterizations to peel back, revealing to us true character in a believable fashion. All of their lives seem rushed in all of the events that had unfolded in the film.
And note to everyone: Besides Ludicrous, Larenz Tate and the Arabic guy, what were the object of desire for these pretentious characters? I saw the film when it came out a year ago and I'm now asking myself that question, but I can't answer it. Isn't the object of desire that "thing" that effortlessly exposes the truth about the characters, sometimes without a single word of dialogue? The film failed at dialogue. Too on the nose and absurd. The author of this script felt that it was necessary to spoon feed us everything we need to know about the characters in this film. When does spoon feeding ever work? And there was not a shred of believability in a single second of the film. You know why? Whatever happened in the end wasn't intelligently set up for us in the first three quarters of the film. You know why? Because there were two many characters and none of them evolved in the story or changed in a satisfying way.
Let me point out a few things in the story that wasn't believable. WARNING: There are spoilers below this point.
I don't know any black man who is out handling his business, whether it's positive or negative, and the whole time he's ranting about the plight of the black man and the conspiracy of the American government against blacks.
I never heard of any Arabic person in the history of America going down to the valio to kill a Mexican he ASSUMED (totally making an ass of only himself in this one) robbed him. And the Arabic man makes it out in one piece after attempting to kill the man and almost mistakenly killing his daughter? What? That can't happen in any neighborhood, whether it's the hood, the valio, the suburbs, where ever.
Sandra Bullock's shallow character was visited by the three ghost of racism (like the three ghost of Christmas), unseen by us of course, and she finally realizes the potential of establishing a healthy companionship with the Mexican maid she was cursing at the top of the film, only because she twisted her ankle and the maid had helped her? What? Then that means, Bullock's character was a fraud. She was never prejudice in the first place, because it'll take more than the enemy assisting one with a twisted ankle to change one's mind about the enemy. I feel cheated. I want my money back...again.
And I don't care what anybody say. Thandie Newton fighting off the cop that felt her up as he tries to save her from a burning car that is about to EXPLODE is all BULLSH*T. I don't believe it. And I thought LA was bigger than that. The cop happens to arrive at the scene of an accident where the woman in trouble just happens to be the one he molested, giving him the convenient opportunity (not even in the worst fantasies) to redeem himself over night? I can ask this because I was born and raised in NYC and you're lucky to run into both the same cops twice. Newton runs into the one cop while Terrence Howard runs into the other cop at around the same time under two different circumstances? This film should've been called "Coincidence." And what's with Newton getting into this off screen car accident to add some weak suspense to the already muddle film? Didn't we already invest enough time into her story, as well as Howard's, to be left out of that near death incident (car accident)? There they go. Cheating me again.
See where I'm going here? Nothing in this film was believable. It was all hokey and manipulative to the weak minded, poor souls looking for any ole'film that can address race.
And to all those who label "Crash" as some fantasy film just to further debate all my quarrels with the damn film, you all know what you can do for me for trying to insult my intelligence.
Crash is not life.