Too many crashes

Rating: 4/10 (24 June 2013)

And the Oscar goes to Crash. This movie, produced by Paul Haggis who also worked on the script of "Million Dollar Baby", won, as I have already said, three Oscars in 2006, for the Best Original Screen Play, the Best Film Editing and for the Best Picture. No doubt, that is a good achievement, but one question remains for me: "Why did this film win three Oscars?!"
At the beginning of the movie you are confronted with its ending and in the following it is shown how this came to happen. The whole plot takes place in Los Angeles during 36 hours. We have two car-jacking African Americans (Larenz Tate and Chris Bridges) who feel discriminated against by everyone. They steal the car of Jean Cabot (Sandra Bullock) and her husband (Brendan Fraser), a white and rich couple. Furthermore there are a TV-series director (Terrence Dashon Howard) and his wife (Thandie Newton) who are black, but life in the upper middle class. Thy get controlled by a racist LAPD cop (Matt Dillon) who is on patrol with his partner (Ryan Phillipe) who watches Dillon's behavior towards African Americans with disgust. And last but not least we have a Persian store owner (Shaun Toub) who thinks he is cheated by a Mexican locksmith (Michael Pena). All these people of different ethnic groups "crash" into each other and have to deal with their prejudices.
The message of Crash is clear; we definitely have to do something against racism and discrimination, as they can even lead to death. We shouldn't have any prejudices about people we don't know, no matter where they come from or what their religion is. Crash is a movie with many cuts, surprising changes and a lot of different stories told at the same time, which makes it hard to understand.
In my opinion there are too many stories told in this movie; too many different things happen. If Haggis put two or three conflicts less in the story, the film would be more logical and realistic. You have to keep in mind that all this happens in 36 hours and I don't think that that is very likely. The worst part of the movie is the end, when nearly every conflict disappears, nearly every problem is solved and the characters just go on living their lives as if nothing had happened. The only good thing I can find in the movie is the message.
Crash is a nice try to open people's eyes to the racism that exists around us, but the story is unrealistic and confusing.