You Thought You Had All the Answers ...

Rating: 7/10 (9 September 2007)

'Crash' is a film of many intersecting lives charged with racial conflict in Los Angeles, California. It won the 2005 Oscar for Best Picture.
Crash is one of those films that tries to seriously tackle a big issue from all sides, through many different characters and multiple plot lines. One of the negative raps 'Crash' has received is that it relies on unlikely co-incidences in some plot developments. Some people don't agree with this, but I did get this feeling. Some of the meetings between the various characters are quite unlikely by themselves, and the whole thing isn't helped by introducing all the main characters at the start and then just having them interact only with each other through the whole long film without introducing anyone else noteworthy. In other words, it feels like Los Angeles is only populated by these people, making their surprise interactions even more jarring as the plot twists and turns ... and twists some more.
The film's tagline, said at one point by Matt Dillon's cop, is 'you think you know who you are? You have no idea.' And the film gets this point across at various instances by repeatedly scratching the surface of its characters. The victim becomes the bigot, the bigot discovers underlying humanity etc. Its a simple message, of course: scratch the surface (the colour of a person's skin) and you'll find depth.
The film is entertaining enough and the tone is pretty much what you would expect from the above description - empathetic, serious, dramatic conflict and self discovery. The acting is good with Don Cheadle displaying a Morgan Freeman ability to make us feel what is going on underneath his sombre, still exterior. Thandie Newton gets the biggest scenes and crackles with intensity. Overall its good - there's one scene (impenetrable cloak) in the middle that gave me goosebumps and is now one of my favourite movie moments - but occasionally kind of florid and a little bit amateurish.
Oh, and for the record, 'Brokeback Mountain' is a much better, focused film than this and should have won the Best Pic award.