I saw Short Cuts. This is NO Short Cuts...

Rating: 1/10 (22 September 2006)

The Academy Awards the movie garnered were probably just Hollywood liberal guilt. Best Picture, Best Supporting actor and Best film! ?? The gods must be crazy! I think what bothered me most about the film was not just the simplistic resolutions of each subplot and the manipulation, but that each character, with the possible exception of the profoundly banal "princess" played by Sandra Bullock, could have been the vehicle for a truly authentic examination of character and conflict.
Matt Dillon (Best Supporting) especially offered a lot of completely untapped possibilities. How can a man who molested and humiliated the black couple turn around and risk his life to save the same woman from the inferno of her car. This is real and happens every day.
I don't know if you remember the scandal of the fire truck full of pilfered Gap jeans that was found near ground zero after September 11 that caused such a furor. The best explanation of the decade (and perhaps all time) was offered by a NYFD commander, "the wind must have blown them into the truck." How could these heroic firemen, some of whom gave their lives to save their fellow citizens, also be pretty thieves? Amerikan society demands we must always look at people as wholly good or wholly evil, ultimately redeemable, but never as they are  an often non-resolvable mixture of both.
In the case of the Dillon policemen, the situation is even more complex  something the movie seemed willing to present but was unable or afraid of examining authentically. I have had a fair amount of contact with police (Chicago), in both positive and negative situations, and found that many I have met seem to exhibit a kind of compartmentalized dual personality. To people whom they regard as "the good guys," occupants of certain accepted racial or socioeconomic classes or citizens in distress, they can be everything the society expects them to be and even heroically more. Should you fall outside these arbitrary but nevertheless well-defined limits, you can expect little fair or even humane treatment. I have seen officers switch back and forth between these two categories - sometimes even in the same sentence. I think this discernment occurs in the reptilian brain and is not even a part of their conscious higher-brain functioning. That is why you would be surprised to watch how this "rebel" behaves in the presence of a "constable on patrol." I never show any signs of hostility or belligerence. Only a fool stands on principle with a man, any man, with a gun. I am especially surprised when poor, supposedly street-savvy black people try to give an officer a hard time. Even when completely justified, it is the dumbest thing that a person of color can do in most parts of this country. It must represent a kind of deeply ingrained death-wish. Even though the scene was obscenely over drawn, I was unsympathetic to the molested Thandie Newton.
I thought, for a brief moment, when Matt Dillon removed her from the burning car that we were in for a deeper examination of his character and perhaps an understanding of this schizophrenia that I mentioned. But no, as the final shot of the sequence seemed to imply, we were to be subjected to just another movie-of the-week resolution that denied the essential elements of the real conflict.
I think the most disturbing thing about Crash was the manipulation. Its failure was not accidental/unintentional  it was made well (Big deal. When was the last time you saw even a badly made Adam Sandler film?), but dishonest in a profound way. Propaganda? For whom? The producers deliberately set out to reinforce stereotypes (even in the guise of denying them) as well as creating merely a feel-good resolution to problems that require a far deeper analysis. With solutions like these we don't need any more problems.
Bob Boldt