A great look at our society. Warning major spoilers

Rating: 10/10 (4 October 2006)

"Crash" has a large name to live up to. Originally released in 2004, it went unnoticed to most people. Through word of mouth and an aggressive advertising campaign the movie received a huge boost in popularity that culminated in the winning of the 2006 academy award for best picture. "Crash" is a roller coaster ride of well developed emotions. It is a crash course in discovering how difference in class and race is all that is needed to turn strangers to enemies in our society. "Crash" is a beautifully constructed film and is one of the few to fully live up to the hype.
The film covers two days in Los Angeles in which a group of radically different people randomly interact and "crash" with each other through a series of coincidences and ironic events. The movies principle is introduced in the first lines spoken by Don Cheadle. "It's the sense of touch. Any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people. People bump into you. In L.A, nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just so we can feel something". These lines implicitly foreshadow the crashing of these random people all separated by race and class. That's what crash is. It's a metaphor for these interactions and coincidental occurrences that are always occurring throughout life. "Crash" is a strange movie. It can be viewed just for enjoyment and be a very satisfying movie or it can be analyzed and deciphered to reveal many hidden themes and ideas that Haiggis portrays through his script. The story revolves around a police detective with a drugged up mother and a criminal young brother, two car thieves who are constantly commenting on class and race, the white district attorney and his irritated wife, a racist white cop (caring for a sick father at home) who upsets his younger partner, a successful Hollywood director and his wife who must deal with the racist cop, a Persian-immigrant father who buys a gun to protect his shop, a Hispanic locksmith and his young daughter, and more. All the people interact with each other in some way, which leads to a very meaningful and heartfelt climax where some of the characters are enlightened and some aren't as lucky.
The movies strongest scenes feature Matt Dillon, who was nominated for an academy award for his part, and Thandie Newton who also shows that unlike her previous movies she can act very well. Perhaps the strongest scene of the movie is the car accident where Dillon's character saves Newton's. Other actors all deliver strong performances and all seem perfectly suited for the rolls in which they are given. Michael Pena ,who was seen in last summers World Trade Center, gives a particularly applaud worthy performance as the little girls father and he proves once again that he is among the finest new actors in the business. The directing is above top notch also. Paul Haggis made his directorial debut with Crash, which he also wrote. Crash marked the second best picture Oscar movie that Haggis has written, the first being Million Dollar Baby. Haggis' next project is the new James bond movie Casino Royale that early reviews are praising. The cinematography of "Crash" is Excellent and uses wide angles shots and crisp clear lenses along with disjointed camera angles to convey the chaos and unpredictability of the characters lives. Also lingering close ups often without sound are used to show characters emotion throughout the films key moments. The soundtrack also adds to much of the emotion going on in a positive way. The movies tight script is very well constructed. It manages to be gritty, heart warming, violent, spontaneous, witty, shocking, thought provoking, and ultimately tragic all at the same time while always keeping character development as a main priority. The movie is also brilliantly paced for its two hour running time; it never feels boring awkward or cheesy.
A closer look at the material shows that "Crash" is an in depth look at many themes. Those most prominent being racism, cause and effect, regaining dignity, coincidences, and tragedy. Throughout the movie the relationships between the characters are weakened or destroyed and only when characters are enlightened do they finally strengthen. A perfect example is when Matt Dillon's racist police officer character molests Thandie Newton's Character in an act of racial discrimination in front of her husband. Later in the movie he arrives on the scene of her car accident and in a moment of panic between the two he throws away his prejudices and accepts that they are both human beings and successfully saves her life. This is an example of an epiphany for Matt Dillon's character. Ryan Phillipe's character is also believed not to be a racist but when he is in the car with a black man and the black man reaches for his pocket, Ryan Phillipe's character shoots the man dead. This is also an epiphany because it is revealed that he to is a racist even though he appeared on the surface not to be. Ironically even the health adviser lady who appeared to be merely a victim of prejudice was a racist herself as seen in the last scene in the movie when she says to a man with an accent "I don't want to speak with anyone who doesn't talk American". "Crash" conveys such a large scale of emotions such as happiness, anger, contempt, fear, pity, and many others. It reveals how stereotypes shape the way the human race views the world so much that sometimes humans generalize people by skin colour or social class before even meeting them.