You meet everyone twice in life.

Rating: 8/10 (13 September 2005)

Crash doesn't present the viewer with an over-reaching story-arc, but is a collection of stories, each a chapter of one person's life. They seem unrelated at first, but over time you realize that an innocuous detail such as a wrong word or a mistaken purchase can have a dramatic outcome. We meet everyone twice in life. We each weave in and out of the lives of strangers, leaving imprints on their souls.
When the eight main characters of Crash meet, the circumstances are always a source of stress: a car crash, a break-in, a hospital visit. The preferred mode of interaction is confrontation and, as high-lighted in this film, the first instinct is to flare up in anger. As the rich, spoiled house-wife (excellently played by Sandra Bullock) exclaims: "Every morning I wake up and I'm angry. I don't know why." What I found surprising about this movie is how frankly it illustrates how most of the time this anger is directed at people of another race. Most movies about race relations are bi-polar: whites against blacks, Hispanics against whites, blacks against Hispanics... However, in this movie all ethnic groups are shown to have some prejudice. "Speak American!", exclaims the black woman when she is addressed by an Asian. "I'm not selling a gun to you, Osama," grunts the white store-keeper to the Persian customer. Hipanics utter racial slurs just as much as Asians, Blacks, Whites or Persians. It has become a gut-reaction.
Crash doesn't moralize about racism and interpersonal relations, though, and few of the story-lines come to a Hollywood-style resolution. Rather, the movie holds up a mirror. It is a document, not a morality tale. This is what makes it work - you'll have to come to your own conclusions.