Allegory full of clichés

Rating: 4/10 (2 January 2006)

OK, I admit to being a hater of 'LA movies.' From Grand Canyon to Magnolia and now Crash, movie makers have featured these universally unlikeable, self-absorbed, and plasticene ensembles of a dozen or so characters. The problem is, they are just not interesting (my wife walked out after 40 minutes; I regret staying to the inconclusive end). They live in cloistered, boring, pampered strip-mall suburbs and fuss over inanity that would make the rest of the World roll their eyes. What's worse, is that Haggis gives each character two very 2-dimensional sides. Each has their 'really, really good' side and their 'really, really bad' side. The movie thumps this 'Yin-Yang' theme with drumbeat regularity, and we are expected to derive some moral lesson by each characters' inevitable comeuppance. Fine for an HBO movie-of-the-month, but not worthy of the big screen.
Unfortunately for Haggis, the obviousness of his attempts at audience manipulation is its undoing. He needs to follow in the foosteps of the 1920s expats-in-Paris, to discover how to make subtle character-driven drama from the French or Italian cinema.
'Oh wow! Look, a movie set in LA - that's where I live.' says the LA local, presumably. Maybe if I lived there I might appreciate these characters and derive some thrill from seeing my home town on screen. I don't, however, think LA locals live in the contrived LA of Crash - where serendipity can drive 10 different people together over and over, again and again. Haggis' LA is a village of a few dozen fear-gripped kind-hearted racists. C'mon guys, show us the real LA some time?