A good drama with a very distorted view on racism

Rating: 7/10 (28 December 2007)

If everybody in the real world would act the way they did in "Crash" then we really are in big trouble. I understand that it is custom in movies to exaggerate in order to make a point. But the way they handled the issues in the movie made me quite sick. Everything was to the extreme and not realistic. The scene where the shop owner Farhad refuses to listen to the locksmith (Pena) because he thinks he tries to cheat him is a good illustration of that. It even gets more ridiculous when he doesn't acknowledge that he was responsible himself for not having the door fixed and blames Pena for ruining his business. The fact that he feels so strongly about this that he wants to kill him is something that doesn't make any sense. If people would act like this then we would have anarchy on our hands. All the characters in "Crash" seem to be occupied with the race issue every single minute of their lives. While that can be true for some that certainly is not depicting a realistic view. If racism in real life was as clear cut as in the movie then it would have been very easy to deal with it. But in real life racism is much more complicated and subtle. There are only a few who openly admit that they are racist and dare to speak up in public. The majority of the people do it behind people's backs and never say the things like some of the characters have said in the movie. At least not directly. Sure they would think it or tell another what they thought. But most people probably don't even realize that they are guilty of making racist comments. And that is where the real problem lies. I do think that "Crash" has some redeeming values. Some of the performances are truly excellent. And there were more than enough scenes that were moving. The moving scenes and the stellar performances make this a movie worth seeing. However I do hope that in future that a movie will be made that actually shows how racism works in real life.