The Kingfish Syndrome

Rating: 7/10 (20 August 2005)

Nothing in the several episodes of 'Due South' or the Oscar-Winning 'Million Dollar Baby', just two of his writing credits, prepared me for Crash. At a very basic level it echoes Robert Penn Warren's terrific novel All The King's Men, a thinly disguised portrait of Huey 'Kingfish' Long, whose complex character could be boiled down to 'there's a little bit of good in the worst of us and a little bit of bad in the best'. There are further nods in the direction of Robert Altman who also likes to people a canvas with several diverse characters and slowly allow them to meld so that the good become blurred with the bad and the bad ... well, you get the point. Although I can't exactly toss my hat into the ring with the majority of previous posters I did keep watching to the end and I was unable to fault the performers but there's a nagging feeling deep down that keeps murmuring that somehow we need a little more than this.