A letdown (spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (10 January 2006)

I wasn't the least bit impressed by Crash. It's a film that tackles an important subject (racism) but it's a film that tackles it with two-dimensional characters, contrivances and sentimentality. In the end all it says is that we're all prejudiced in our own way and that prejudice is bad. Well, to anyone with half a brain that's hardly a revelation, but although the message is a little obvious and pap, I would be happy to embrace the film if it were well written and well directed, but it's not.
What disappointed me most about the film was the way the characters weren't characters but mouthpieces instead. It's like Paul Haggis has culled every different opinion and view on race and shoehorned it into his film. At no point does it feel organic. At no point do the people seem like people expressing themselves freely. They always sound like they're reading a magazine article, that someone is putting words in their mouth. Of course this is the case, but good film writing is when you completely forget there's a script.
The worst culprits are the two black carjackers. All they do is discuss the prejudices they face. Sure this may be a subject close to their hearts, but I find it hard to accept that they wouldn't talk about anything else. And yes you may scream that that is what the film is about; prejudice, but I've always thought it much more effective to tackle subjects through themes, rather than have the characters rant about the issue at hand for a couple of hours like they were on Question Time. But then again, subtlety isn't a thing this film is endowed with.
Having said that, though, I do admire the film for at least having a go at tackling racism in an even-handed way. It's a film that acknowledges that racism isn't the sole preserve of whites, that do-gooders do as much harm as bigots and that we're all partly to blame for the current mess. But although these things are touched upon, none of them is investigated in any depth. The film takes a scattershot approach to its subject, rendering it unsatisfactory.
The most interesting segment is the one to do with Don Cheadle's investigation into a shooting involving two policemen. It touches on political spin, the way that shortsighted idiots want to promote people not for their individual merits but for their political value, and the way that pussyfooting around on the issue of race has a negative effect on everyone. But while I think this would make a very interesting film all on it's own, and one that would make more profound comments on race, it's just a brief portion of the film.
Conversely you have a pretty poor segment focusing on an Iranian shopkeeper. The man is like Basil Fawlty without the laughs. He's a complete knob who spends his time ranting and raving and behaving obnoxiously. And he even gets so irate that he tries to kill a Hispanic man who he thinks cheated him (the Hispanic man is the complete opposite of the shopkeeper  he's so saintly it defies belief). But this leads to a syrupy scene where the Hispanic man's daughter intervenes (bathed in ethereal light and accompanied by twinkly music) and inadvertently allows the shopkeeper to rethink his worldview.
And that's another thing that's wrong with the film. All the prejudiced characters in the film have their beliefs adjusted through tumultuous events. I know the film's called Crash and Cheadle at the start says that people are disconnected and only change their views when they collide with other people, but it's not really true. Yeah a traumatic event can change your outlook on life but people's prejudices are more often eroded through time and experience. So while I can accept people changing their views when they crash into other people, it just seems silly when it occurs multiple times like it does in this film. And the way it happens, too, doesn't help.
I've already mentioned the scene with the shopkeeper, but the scene where Bullock embraces her Mexican housekeeper and says that she's her best friend is about as subtle as Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier linking fingers in The Defiant Ones and Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder singing 'Ebony and Ivory'. And then there's the final scene itself. The sassy black car thief frees some Thai people. Wonderful you may think. He's discovered his humanity. But aside from the fact that the scene is saccharine in the extreme, it also makes no sense logically. He frees a bunch of people who can't speak English and who have no money (oh, he gives them $40). They're going to have a good time, aren't they? They can look forward to living on the streets, being spit upon by people in SUVs and, if they're lucky, they might get a job washing dishes. It's the American dream, baby. But then to make the ending even worse, right at the final moment, there's another crash and more racial anger. You see what's the director is saying? The cycle continues. Wow, it's a revelation!
But the thing that infuriated me the most was the idiotic scene where Phillippee shoots Cheadle's brother in his car. It was ridiculous. Philippee picks the bloke up, they behave like children and wind each other up, and then in a tragic mix-up, Cheadle's brother gets killed. The scene is one big contrivance. The director needs a sting in the tail, to again prove that the cycle continues, so you have a big coincidence, an unbelievable argument and a shooting. Yes the races are still uneasy together, yes they're still suspicious and yes the consequences can sometimes be tragic, but by trying to cover all the bases and all the arguments, Haggis spreads himself far too thin. Better to do one thing well than lots of things poorly.