Unfortunate

Rating: 5/10 (28 December 2005)

I'm unsure how it happened, but Crash apparently duped the majority of film critics in America into thinking it was an extraordinary exploration of race and prejudice in America. I wholeheartedly disagree with anyone who thinks this movie deals intelligently with one of the problems that most plagues our country. You are entitled to your opinion, but I think you are wrong. Why has everyone been fooled? Roger Ebert recently named this his favorite movie of the year, and David Denby referred to it as the best American film since Mystic River. These are two of my favorite critics. Did I miss something? The rest of the IMDb community seems to think this a brilliant film as well. My one question: Why?
Is it because here is a film that is well-made? The direction is steady; the acting is above average; you can relate to the characters; and it addresses an issue that Hollywood generally steers clear of. My assumption is that because this movie is well-done and chooses to look at subject matter one typically does not see on the big screen, everyone has ignored the film's major flaws--and there are a lot of them--because this is the type of movie you should like. Who wants to say they don't like the movie that deals directly with race in America? Who wants to incriminate themselves by saying that this movie just isn't as smart as everyone thinks it is? No one, really. I'm exaggerating, I think, as it appears Salon.com and the New York Times were smart enough to see that this emperor wasn't wearing any clothes.
I saw this film when it was released on DVD and was very eager to watch it. I had heard wonderful things and had heard it compared to some of my favorite movies--Short Cuts, Magnolia, Nashville, etc. And, I thought, wow a movie that deals with racism in prejudice--we could really use one of those.
It was horrible let down. First, I will address a technical problems with the film. My major complaint in this area derives from the film's length. It's far too short. There are too many characters to introduce and too short a time period to do them any justice. These are not, to go back to ninth grade, round characters at all. They're two-dimensional, which is, granted, better than one-dimensional, but, really, a far cry from the depth of character one typically finds in a great movie. All Haggis has time to do is show us how a character "is" and then undermine or complicate that character's essence. So: (Remember how I said I included spoilers? Here are the big ones) the idealistic young cop who hates his racist partner and protects a black man whom his partner had wronged earlier kills an unarmed black youth and flees the scene. He's not a racist but his prejudices came to the surface and he shot someone. Oh my! The racist cop, on the other hand, shows real compassion for his sick father and rescues a woman he molested from a burning car. Holy cow he's complicated! The good black cop cannot remember the ethnicity of his maybe-girlfriend but he is such a good cop or is he? He does let exonerating evidence disappear so that the DA can get points with the black community. Man, these people are so deep! No, they are not. Some are more developed than others (Matt Dillon and Don Cheadle's characters, for instance), but they never come truly alive. Haggis simply has far too many other characters he wants to be central to the story to accomplish that. That's a major flaw of this film as a film. How can anyone ignore that? How can discerning viewers watch Crash and compare it to the three-hour behemoths Short Cuts and Magnolia, where the characters are given time to flower and grow? Really, did I see the abridged version of Crash?
Then there's the general uninspired-ness of the film. The cinematography is banal and the direction, which is passable, certainly leaves something to be desired. It's not bad, per se, but it is mediocre--never better than average. How can this be a great movie then?
Those are technical matters, though, that one can overlook when a film has something important to say. Look at Boyz in the Hood, which was not really well done, but it had an urgent message that affects its audience viscerally. It somehow rises above itself and some of its immature trappings. The same thing goes with Better Luck Tomorrow. Crash, though, has nothing important to say. Or am I supposed to think that "we're all prejudiced on some level" is a profound sentiment? Because I don't. I know that's true. Why? Because I've despised people at a glance simply because they wear shirts with their collars popped only to find out that, well, they're really all right. And because a group of teenagers wearing studded dog collars in a park will still cause me to go out of my way just so I won't have to walk by them. Who hasn't had thoughts like this? If you haven't, you're a saint.
Crash doesn't delve into the problem of race in America. It pretends to but barely scratches the surface. It has a facile understanding of race in America; it understands it no better than I do. We need art to show us alternatives and show us paths to a better world--something that Crash is incapable of doing.
I am very hostile towards this film, if you couldn't tell. Why is that? It's not a bad movie, really. It's simply that it has been afforded some privilege that it doesn't quite earn. It's been deemed great by many because it is an atypical Hollywood film that is done well. That does not make it a great or important film. It makes it an average one at best.