You think you know who they are. You have no idea.

Rating: Null/10 (18 May 2005)

By the end of Crash, it was clear to me that the movie's tagline can be turned on the audience as easily as on the characters. The thing about this film that really got to me is that the actors, the writers, the director don't allow you to feel comfortable with yourself. You are forced to re-evaluate each character over and over throughout the course of this complex story, until you're left with only a partial understanding of the difficult and often unexpected decisions both likable and despicable people can make.
Crash weaves together the stories of several groups of people from many races and levels of society in Los Angeles. A Persian store owner is accused of being a terrorist sympathizer. A young black man, working with a friend, rails against the injustice of stereotyping against blacks while stealing cars. The LA district attorney tries to balance his chances of winning an upcoming election with a possibly racially motivated killing. These and several more plot lines run tangetally to each other, touching at significant points to illustrate just how thin the line between right and wrong really is--and how much moral grey area one can fit there.
The acting is tight and superb. The fact that there are so many "main" means that no one person dominated the film, but it also meant that we ere given a Hemingway-esquire treatment of each--short and to the point, without wasted and unconvincing emoting, or sloppy tug-at-the-heartstrings moments.
Recommended whole-heatedly.