a crash-test dummy?

Rating: 5/10 (3 June 2005)

This film grabbed my attention because it's not the typical commercial mainstream movie, even though it's playing in typical commercial mainstream theatres right now. I have always had an affinity for the avant garde or alternative films in today's cinema, and with an all-star cast that you know took these roles for chump change, one cannot help but to be attracted to it. The first name that caught my eye's was Sandra Bullock's (which coincidently IS the first name listed). And this film didn't seem to be a lite, cutesy one (since that's all she ever does), so I thought it'd be worth checking out with names like Don Cheadle, Thandie Newton, and William Fichtner also on its venue.
I grew up in Thousand Oaks and Orange County in the 1970s & '80s, and back then they were the most homogenized Wonder Bread cities (I think T.O. still is). Fast-forward to the early nineties, and I lived in Pasadena and the L.A. basin for years. And what I couldn't believe this time was how my white friends were so racist, and yet L.A.'s the last place to live if one wanted to practice being a successful bigot. I think because I come from a religiously mixed family (Christian & Jewish), I feel like I have little room to be prejudice. Yet we all are, and my dad's resentment towards southeast Asians seems to rub off on me at times. "Crash" is an equal opportunity abuser: it does not favor any race, and white people are NOT the only prejudice people on this earth (which some people have conditioned society to believe).
Although some viewers may have been offended by its raw content at times or that it was pretentious, "Crash" illustrates older, played-out issues that still seem to linger subliminally and in plain sight. This is not an uplifting movie, yet it is a somewhat powerful one, nor is it black or white (no pun was intended there). Everyone's wrong. This film was with racism how "Traffic" was to drugs. This even reminded me at times of "Traffic" with its score and the intertwining multiple characters (Don Cheadle de'ja vu'd me, too). Possibly the most poignant and powerful scene was where the Latino locksmith came home to be confronted by the Persian shopkeeper and his revolver. The locksmith's 5-year-old little girl jumps into his arms believing that she could deflect the bullet with her "invisible cloak" that she believed was "Impenetrable" just as the gun fires. That part made my heart stop and my blood chill. And my eyes glazed like donuts as I watched the little girl's reaction to it.
To me, Matt Dillon's punishment for molesting that woman was realized both by watching his father suffer and by having to face her again in a dire situation. Brendan Fraser was underused (as well as Ms. Bullock), and I wish I could of seen more, because it seemed to me that he was having an affair with his assistant (who was African American). That would of been an interesting interracial subplot right there, and it probably was. However, my guess is that it wound up on the cutting room floor because it would of dragged the film.
That'll probably be in the deleted scenes material for the DVD.
I haven't seen "Million Dollar Baby" yet, but I think that because of the success to that film, this one was able to be produced. I also remember seeing Don Cheadle's name there, too. Otherwise, methinks this would simply have been an unfilmable script if it weren't for the named actors in it who all put their one-an-a-half and two cents in.