Crash: Drama for dummies

Rating: 2/10 (20 July 2006)

This is a good movie if you are the type of person who needs everything spelled out for you, be taught moral lessons and have political statements preached to you. Obnoxiously slapping the audience in the face with its self-righteousness in every scene, Crash manages to be become the only film to which I have 'awarded' the lowest score to on IMDb: 2/10. I can't even believe how terrible this film is. I don't even know what the 2 is for because no redeeming aspects come to mind as I write this.
The content is racism, if that wasn't clear enough. The events in the film are all shadowed by racial prejudice. The characters are all of different races. All people ever talk about in the film is racism. They do not talk about it casually as a means to make the dialog believable or accessible but whatever is said are readily-made, perfectly-crafted speeches on racist issues that sound like they've been taken from an opinion column in a political magazine.
So Crash drills these things into your head at all times, thereby cheapening its message -- which is, essentially, that racism is bad and that we stereotype based on race (0/10 for originality!). Ironically, what is most disturbing about the film is not the racial stereotypes that are present, but that American audiences NEED to be told these things and need such obvious morals to be spelled out for them and need a guy like Haggis shaking their finger at them telling you that is bad behaviour. This fills me with concern for the intelligence of the average movie-goer. After all, how can you applaud a film that states the obvious?
The icing of the cake of a dreadful film for me was the scene in which the little cutesy Latina girl is 'shot', trying to protect her father (Hispanic guy whose name I cannot recall as the only thing that is put forward in Crash is a person's race). As she jumps in front of her father to take the bullet for him there is THE cheesiest most "sorrowful" score imaginable playing loudly and the American flag blowing in the wind in the background of the shot. This scene is one of the worst, cheapest in film history. Who can honestly sit and watch that with a straight face?
I can only assume that the big budget of Crash was spent on late night taco-runs as nothing of substance is presented to us. Offensively poor writing, contrived performances, endless clichés make this simply an unwatchable film. To call it manipulative is giving it too much credit as that implies the clever disguise of intentions and messages and Crash does not even try to disguise anything -- it just preaches.
2/10