How someone older than 8 would believe in this?

Rating: 2/10 (26 August 2006)

No, I'm not one of those hysterical fans of "Brokeback Mountain" who hardly stand "Crash"'s victory in the Oscar night. Awards, for me, are irrelevant.
But I wonder how one silly screenplay like this won an election with more than 6000 voters as the Academy Award... especially, when 99,99999% of them are older than 8. Okay okay, I am I, they are they.
Okay. The film was filmed in the classic way, a story with three acts. The first act: presentation of the story and the characters. Second act: 'the happenings'. Third act: the consequences. Not exactly like that - but the characters, not necessarily in the chronology of the movie, follow this dramatic circle. Til here, no problems.
Let's begin the show. In the first part of the characters, it's hardly to find one unique conversation that can't be classified with "racism & prejudice discussion". OK, this is a film about racism, so it's natural; but all this kind of thing gets boring and all the characters loses a bit of their humanity with this stuff. I would let it pass if the dialogs were well written, but unfortunately this isn't the case. What everyone would say about that ridiculous Ludicrous's character? The only moments with him was when he had 'intelligent chats' about racism (and some things like "the bus windows are racist"... hilarious) just before steal a car. All of the dialogs explicitly about prejudice (especially Ludicrous's and Sandra Bullock's (the conversation with her husband after the robbery is embarrassing)). Y'know, Bullock's character could be more complex and her dialogs would be justified, but Haggis prefer to do she as 'the woman who receives violence and misjudges black and Latin people.
In fact, I would spent so much time explaining how the characters of "Crash" have a horrible construction. The characters of Matt Dillon, Sandra Bullock, who represents the white racists, are limited to construction who lets us to think " it's just this?". It's too superficial. With two or three exceptions, all of the prejudice feelings of them are justified in the most obvious way. With maybe the exception of the doubtful Cameron (Terrence Howard) and the hesitating Hanson (Ryan Philippe). All the others are unidimensional persons from a parallel reality, Haggis's reality.
Let's go to the happenings. The scene when cop Ryan (Matt Dillon) interacts with Christine (Thandie Newton) and Cameron (Terrence Howard) and all the discussion after it in the couple is awesome - just when the theme to reflect is not racism but police repression, something that Haggis shouldn't have predicted. The scene Ryan Philippe and Howard (again...) as protagonists is too damn good. But are isolated points. And the conversation between Graham (Don Cheadle) and Conklin (Martin Norseman) is excellent too, because criticize one terrible and few discussed face of racial tension: political correction.
But it's really sad to see this good scenes mixed in a film with craps like the scene with Michael Peña, he's daughter and an stereotyped gun nut Arab is ridiculous. It's embarrassing to see that Haggis would think that we would believe in that sh*t. The second scene concerning Dillon's and Newton's characters it's ridiculous for two reasons: the insulting way the story characterizes them and the way Haggis direct. Among with this scene, the redeemer scene of Sandra Bullock competes one of the most shameful moments of cinema. This Canadian directs with the unique intention of make people cry - he abuses of slow-motions, super-mega-ultra-closes and silly melodramatic songs. To complete, he propose unexplainable changes in the personality of the characters to people say: "Look folks, humans are contradictory". Ha ha ha.
Paul Haggis seems to live in an universe that's is not the same as mine. Because I don't live in a world where people are flags of prejudice or anything else - humans are more than that. To complete, Haggis's LA seems to have about... 100 habitants? These stories are connected, but the way he did it insulted my intelligence! When the movie finished I felt just like I said. Insulted. How in Earth a man would think that someone older than 8 would believe in too many stereotype persons, symbols of the political correction critic of racism? How he would believe that someone would accept his silly, coincidental universe? I take the risk to say that this film is racist because this generalization of LA's citizens in those pre-fabricated models of a prejudicial society. Appealing this way, he proposes the more simple solution: if the races don't crash, it would be easier.
A shame. Really.