Half-Baked, Weirdly Dated and Morally Suspect

Rating: 5/10 (31 August 2018)

This is one of the least deserving Best Picture of all time. It is not a good movie. And more to the point, the films it won over were all so much better. I think a lot of people will complain about the script. There is a ton of unsubtle sociological points made and there is a ton of a coincidences. However, that largely doesn't bother me. The script, if viewed as a morality parable, is really good. Most of the character are archetypes and go through really straight forward arcs. (They are all a variant on redemption and punitive). Most characters have at least have some irony to their character. And in any case the sublime acting soothes over the rough edges. However, the direction is simply at odds with this sort of theatrical abstraction.
Haggis, the director, routinely fails Haggis, the screenwriter by presenting the events in a naturalistic and subdued visual style. This script was calling for far less visual restraint and it should been pushed far, far, farther into neo-noir lighting. The script is operatic and the direction is conventional and that just doesn't have a tonal consistency to it. And unfortunately there's just enough visual flourishes to sense that Haggis realized this. I.E. the repeated Christmas imagery.
Apart from that there is one problem with the script that does bug me. The movie is about racism and bigotry. It spends most, but not all, of its time demonstrating overt bigotry and the consequence of overt stereotypical thinking. Racism generally doesn't work that way today anymore. Implicit bias and convert racism is far, far, far more common and the film does not seem to realize that. This makes the film feel like it arrived late. The treatment here of racism is far more needed in the 60's, not the 2000's. (This aspect use to feel worse but unfortunately Trumpianism happened).
And in the same vein I have a huge problem with Dillion's character being treated as "redeemed." There simply isn't enough done by the character to warrant thinking he made up for sexually assaulting Newton's character. It is also an example of sexism being propped up to discuss racism. This aspect really is suspect.
Crash was a terrible, terrible choice for best picture.