How often do you get your prejudices knocked in a hat?

Rating: 10/10 (12 October 2005)

I can't stand cops, or couldn't until I saw this movie. I told my grandson not to major in Criminal Justice because police see the worst of people and sometimes become like them in order to survive. Not so a firefighter. Matt Dillon, doing the best acting of his life, portrays a rotten cop and a good cop, going from worst to best and nearly giving up his life in the process of saving another. Talk about the Bible Illustrated!!! "Giving up your life for your brother"...what a portrayal!!! Especially when the savior is also the molester!!! Now flip it and Crash gives us the other side: as the rookie cop, disgusted by the abuse of the Dillon cop, works his new assignment, he saves the black movie director's life who is trying to perform 'suicide by cop'. But then, doing another Good Samaritan deed, he winds up killing another black guy for nothing but a St. Christopher's medal that he thought was a gun in the kid's pocket.
This will remind you of Robert Altman's films as all these various ethnic types have their lives intertwined, and a nigh-fatal occurrence goes down because of the lack of understanding and communication between the Iraqi and the Hispanic (funny, the description calls him 'Persian').
The only mysterious character is the D.A.'s wife, played by Sandra Bullock. I never understood why she was always so angry. Nor did I understand what the D.A. was having to explain. This movie is so rich with so many subplots, you really need to see it multiple times. I was so busy keeping up with who was who that I sometimes thought I was involved with the detective when I was actually with the D.A.
It started to get too 'Hollywood' with magic saving people's lives, until one didn't get his life saved. The portrayal of the compromises we human being make to get through life, to get ahead in our careers, was devastating. "Forsake all others and come after me". "He who would save his life must lose it, for my sake." or the Biblical verse: "If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out". The axiom: "He who returns evil for evil is human, he who returns evil for good is monstrous, but he who returns good for evil is saintly." will occur to you more than once as you watch this very excellent "CLEARED for Sunday SCHOOL LESSONS" film. It is not profanity and sex that is evil: it is murder, corruption of the soul, greed, and thievery of both goods and one's good name, as epitomized by the Bush administration and represented here.