Watched it Twice - Still not Convinced

Rating: 6/10 (25 May 2007)

I first saw and commented on this film in 2005, before it won the best picture Oscar. I did not think it deserved the high rating it had on this site at the time. While I found it very watchable and never boring, I thought, like many, it had contrived extreme situations in an effort to beat us over the head with the message that racism is bad. The term "After School Special" has been used by a number of reviewers, and that's exactly what came to mind upon my first viewing. Some time after it won the Oscar, and after having discussed the film with one of his teachers, my high-school-aged son decided to give "Crash" a look, so I decided to watch it with him to validate or rescind my previous opinion. While a second viewing revealed that some of the situations were perhaps not as extreme as initially perceived, I still came away thinking there were too many flaws for this to even be considered a best picture, much less win it.
There is the scene early on where the cops pull over the black couple, and Dillon's character claims he saw them doing a sex act. Uh, is he supercop, with x-ray vision that can see through metal and fabric? He saw nothing other than a woman pop up and appear in the passenger seat. Sure, we know what the implications are, but she could just as easily have been picking something up that she'd dropped on the floor. None of the characters seemed to question this.
If you were making a purchase in a store and the owner insulted you, particularly with racial slurs, are you going to give him your business or get your money back and go elsewhere? Is there only one gun store in LA? The dialog surrounding the first carjacking scene was silly. A black man argues that the body language of white people indicates they perceive danger when in the vicinity of African Americans, then goes on to prove the perception is valid. Later on in a discussion with her husband, Sandra Bullock's character indicates she was in fact afraid that night, then goes on to imply that her husband should have realized that and done something to prevent the carjacking. What should he have done I wonder, say "hey guys, please don't do anything bad to us, seeing as how you're black and all." The scene between the locksmith and Turkish store owner where the owner kept insisting the locksmith was trying to cheat him by not replacing his door was something straight out of Monty Python.
And on and on.
Again, a watchable movie, but one with too many flaws to be considered Oscar-worthy. I don't know what picture should have won the best picture Oscar in 2005, but I definitely don't think it was this one.