well-shot and often well-acted, but it's so subject heavy...

Rating: 6/10 (6 November 2005)

I had heard so much about Crash over these past months in 2005, seen it pop up repeatedly on top 10 lists, and only heard a couple of reviews from friends or critics saying it was a bad movie. After finally seeing it, I feel like I've seen a film in conflict with itself, which is for better or worse depending on who is watching it. The stories in the film revolve around several characters (ensemble style), including cops, gangsters, foreigners, upper-class types, lower-class types, who get in such conflicts with each other, practically all by racial attitudes and bigotry. It's a tough call for me as a viewer, because I respect the effort that has been put into it, the initial ambition to track the kinds of racial boundaries that make things with people on edge all over America, not just Los Angeles. And performances by the likes of Sandra Bullock (her best since Miss Congeniality 2...just kidding, really top notch), Don Cheadle, Thandie Newton, Matt Dillon, and even Brendan Fraser, go above expectations. The problem I see lies in the script.
Writer/director Paul Haggis, who scored some points for his script of Million Dollar Baby (an adaptation, but one that did have a level of simplicity that helped), sometimes confuses making bold statements by these assorted types as being perfectly modulated alongside the style. The funny thing is, the photography is quite interesting, in its hand-held, quasi-Traffic style, however even under the surface I almost felt there was a kind of TV-movie feel to it that I couldn't shake. Un-like a real masterpiece about racism in America, Do The Right Thing, there aren't many any sidebars (or little details) to the characters really that break up the more tense moments. And it's not just the pile of coincidences that one has to take fully into account, or that many scenes seem like rushed climaxes, but that even when things get dramatically correct and strong (later in the film, when not too melodramatic) it isn't as real as it should be. Maybe I'm missing something, or maybe it's that the movie isn't very subtle, but it's no great film to me. It is good, sometimes provocative, and not in totally in the league of other non-linear films that have come out in the past decade. Grade: B