Good but not "The Best Motion Picture Of The Year"

Rating: 5/10 (3 May 2006)

I was as amazed as anyone that Crash beat Brokeback Mountain to the Oscar. I cannot believe that people were uppity about the so called 'gayness' of Brokeback when Crash showed up the mindless racism of LA - and they seemed to want to celebrate the fact. To me that's plain madness.
Crash is a good film in my opinion. The strong points: it's worthy, the story highlights issues and prejudices that shouldn't exist, and it shows some positive resolutions to those problems in a way that seems creditable. Also the acting is top class and the technical work + music (by Mark Isham) is very good.
But... the dialogue just feels so contrived and so unnatural. I didn't believe that these characters would talk like they did. It seemed to me that the writers tried to write passionate and thought provoking verbal arguments between characters, whilst making no effort to make them subtle. The archetypal poor, black man spoke exactly the same way as the archetypal rich, white man. The only thing that prevented the film from sliding into a bad one was the fact that there were many story lines that drew our attention away from the dodgy dialogue from the previous scene.
At the end of watching it I was left thinking, "noble effort, but not sensational." It will forever be infamous for 'that Oscar win' which will bring undue hostility toward a film that wasn't designed for it. Brokeback Mountain was the better all-round film, but Crash deserves some credit for being as brave in it's subject matter - even though it doesn't live up to the same overall standard.