A poor shell of successful predecessors

Rating: 6/10 (18 July 2006)

At the time of this writing, this film ranks #92 on IMDb's top 250. The only explanation for this is that most of those voters haven't seen Amores Perros, Thirteen Conversations about One Thing, Magnolia, or several other intersecting-lives movies.
The intersecting-lives template was already played out by the time this movie came along. Why it won Best Picture? Maybe it just sucked the least of the films up for consideration this past year, or maybe the academy didn't want to award it to the gay film Brokeback Mountain, as so many are hyperventilating. I haven't seen BM so I can't say. The Oscar award probably also explains the high IMDb rating, because many simple-minded folk went and saw this due to the controversy of it beating BM to the Oscar, who otherwise would be busy seeing things like Kill Bill or Shrek 2.
It really seems like a clumsy attempt at something beyond its capabilities. When cellular car phones first came out, in the 1980's, I saw a crappy cheap car with a bumper sticker that read "I love my cellular phone". I looked in at the front seat and there was a common house phone sitting there, pretending to be a cell phone. A cheap, non-functioning, clumsy attempt at imitation. Another example is "fusion" cuisine. Some foofy upscale restaurants develop fusion menus, and suddenly there are walk-up counters in food courts with laser jet printed signs saying "Fusion food served here!" So what am I getting on about with these illustrations? Crash is really a poor attempt at the form done very well in Amores Perros, and slightly less so in 13 Conversations and Magnolia. Heck, the American remake of Traffic, also with Don Cheadle, is a better intersecting-lives movie and it doesn't really fit the template! Why isn't Crash so good? Well, if you see the aforementioned, you will see much further developed character arcs and little politics and supermarket checkout stand magazine sentiment. The characters in Crash do everything but cite bibliographic references for the issues they are each assigned. The audience should be trusted to reach some conclusions on its own based on the strength of the movie, rather than have them dictated to them.
And don't forget the musical interlude 3/4 of the way through! You know, where some sappy song is played, and each character is seen looking out the window, presumably contemplating the drama they have just been through, but in actuality probably hoping this movie doesn't sink their careers.
The only reason to see Crash is so you can see the movie that knocked the cowboy lovers out of their saddle.