Message of this movie is false, and doesn't work.

Rating: 1/10 (11 March 2008)

Crash tries to be a complex anti-racism movie, meant to besmirch every human being by saying that every human being is racist to at least some degree.
Plain and simple, the message of Crash is supposed to be:
"Everyone is racist."
Crash's solution this problem, the way for everyone to no longer be racist, is:
"Everyone should trust every other human being in the world implicitly, even if they are total strangers."
Which is obviously an asinine idea that can never work in real-life. Completely ludicrous. I saw Terence Howard on Charlie Rose a couple of years ago, promoting the movie Crash. Howard told Charlie Rose that Crash was the best thing that exists for mankind, and if everyone listened to and applied the message of Crash in real-life, it would be the single best thing that could ever happen in the world to change the world for the better.
But, Terence Howard was wrong. Trusting every other human being implicitly for the sake of "not being racist at all" would only lead to those who do so being taken advantage of horribly. It wouldn't help society at all, it would just make nefarious activities against other human beings *easier* for the law-breaking thugs to commit.
The Ryan Phillippe character in Crash is *supposed* to be alleged by this movie to be racist because he shot a thug who it looked like was about to shoot him. That alleged racism is bogus. He wasn't shooting him because of his race, he was shooting him because he was a violent criminal thug and that was very evident from his hostile demeanour, irrespective of his skin color. This is another area the intended message of this movie fubars. Claiming that any negative thought or action taken against any member of another race, is wrong & racism by default. That is what the movie promotes, but that is not so. To delude one's self in believing that anyone who is not the same race as one's self is inherently good, and any negative thoughts or actions against them are wrong & racist no matter what, is not ridding the world of racism. It's ridding the world of common sense.
Don't get me wrong, racism does indeed exist, and racism is indeed bad. No one is arguing with that. Where Crash gets it wrong is in stating that every human being is racist, and going through life without trusting implicitly every stranger in the world who is not the same race as you, is racism. Due to message of Crash being incorrect, impossible to rationally apply in real-life, and therefore failing, and the fact that Crash has no artistic merit or reason for existing beyond trying to promote that message, Crash is not a good movie.
The acting in Crash is phenomenal from everyone, except for from Ludicrous who is a real-life rapper (not an actor). Ludicrous gives an embarrassingly-awful performance and clearly he is *vastly* out of his league playing in this movie, which aside from himself, is comprised of a huge ensemble of nothing other than master actors. To add insult to injury, Ludicrous' lines in the movie reek of hypocrisy, and consist of him getting up on a soapbox and renouncing rap music as evil that ruins Black youth even though the rap music he describes in the movie is *exactly* the same rap music he himself makes in real-life. I realize that an actor playing a role is just an actor playing a role, but that paradigm does not apply to the movie Crash in particular since Ludicrous in my opinion was not cast in this movie for reasons relating to his (complete lack of) acting talent. And because the purpose of Crash is not like most movies, to entertain, but rather the purpose is solely to deliver the message: "Everyone is racist, and you must trust every other human being implicitly in order not to be racist." Therefore the hypocrisy of Ludicrous delivering lines about the evil of rap music in Crash reeks extra much.
Great acting from everyone but Ludicrous is not enough to save Crash, though, since it has nothing else going for it. Crash is also painful to watch and listen to due to the terrible foreign elevator-music singing that is constantly blaring over most of the scenes. In my opinion, some badly-done production elements of Crash are a result of reverse-racism/affirmative-action at work: the casting of Ludicrous even though he can't act at all but just because he's a popular Black man in pop culture, and filling the movie with terrible foreign elevator-music singing throughout because then it gets token points for giving "foreign talent" a chance. Don't get me wrong on this either, foreign music is *fine* if it's *good*. The problem with Crash is that it sounds like they just greenlighted the very first piece of crap terrible foreign elevator-music singing that came across their desk *only* because it was foreign, and decided to plaster it all over the movie. Woe comes to the ears of the viewing audience as a result.
Note: While writing this review, I have in fact spelled Ludicrous' name in the proper way how he wants it to be spelled: "L-u-d-a-c-r-i-s"- every time I used it. However, IMDb's automatic "spellcheck" changes it automatically to "Ludicrous" every single time without any input from me or choice to prevent that. This is not carelessness or ignorance on my part, it's simply the automated spellcheck forcing these mis-spellings into this review. Maybe it's Divine Intervention. to be seen as an omen about Ludcrious' acting talent? I don't know, but the point is, the mis-spelling of his name in this review is due to automation beyond my control, not due to any error on my part.
Crash is probably the greatest ensemble of acting talent ever put into a bad movie that goes nowhere and accomplishes nothing.