2005's Biggest Disappointment.

Rating: 3/10 (10 January 2006)

Crash is a film that is trying much too hard to try and show a part of society that is already painfully obvious. Stop and think... you are in the middle of a public place and someone shouts "HEY! RACISM EXISTS! AND I'M NOT GOING TO DO A THING ABOUT IT!" Now imagine how you would feel? What is such an exclamation worth if there is no resolve offered with it? Crash is a collection, for the most part, of absurdly shallow stories with overly clichéd characters.
With the exception of the moving performance delivered by Michael Pena, the acting is significantly flawed and irritating. Most importantly, is the complete lack of depth and progression of the majority of the cast. The words "cliche" and "redundant" can not be used enough to describe the racial representations in Crash.
The White's (Bullock, Dillon, and Fraser) are incredibly dull, phobic, uneducated and stereotypically shown as the "we are the dominant race," because of course Crash would not be much of a movie without a "bad guy."
Next, we have the African Americans, which is an almost embarrassing and degrading representation. We have a "social intellect" who as he steals cars, continues on his "the white man is keeping the black man down" rants. The blacks also have the over the edge "black pride" role of Thandie Newton. While breaking the law and then crying a string of "this is because i'm black" proclamations, you can't help but wonder WHY this character was put in this movie, did Paul Haggis WANT us to dislike the blacks in Crash?
The thing i can't understand the most about Crash, is the acclaim that Terrence Howard received for his role. After the blatant ignorance of his wife Newton's character, Howard makes a split from her and carries on the majority of the film conflicted about himself as a man, an African American and a husband. This was the only shot Crash really had at character development, and it failed. Newton's character evolves NONE from start to finish in Crash, and Terrence's character, with whatever revelation he quietly achieves in his own mind, is never shared with the audience, thus making his return to Newton at the end a total waste of whatever change we thought he was building up to.
Another huge disappointment of Crash was the complete irrelevance of the supporting cast (Cheadle, Esposito, Phillippe). There is not a scene involving these characters that furthers the story or enhances the film in any way without just adding to the ever accumulating pile of redundancy. If the complete failure of character structure and advancing plot is not enough to be making you want to hit the stop button, then perhaps the complete lack of innovative camera work is. From the opening scene to the closing credits, Crash fails to deliver anything innovative to film, technique, or the ever pressing battle on racism.
Do we as a society have a serious problem with racism? Yes. Are we as a society aware of this? Yes. Do we need a film that presents no resolution nor challenges the idea of racism to try and drive the point home? Most certainly not. I was thoroughly irritated and disappointed with this film.