Another Hollywood issue movie: trite, poorly written & not even remotely believable

Rating: 4/10 (7 April 2007)

The fact that a movie this trite can win an Academy Award speaks volumes about Hollywood's understanding of race relations. Here's a movie that presents a racist white cop feeling up a black woman (who doesn't file a harassment suit) and then (by pure coincidence) pulls her from a burning car one second before it blows up, and she looks back at him afterward and smiles as if to say, "hey let's go out on a date". Here's a movie that portrays someone shooting someone of another race (out of revenge), but, surprise! no one gets hurt. Here's a movie that manages to cram in almost every racial group into it, but completely steers clear of queers, yes an LA without gays....or gay jokes/slurs. Lots of completely annoying characters angrily spouting off dialog that was clearly written by someone who doesn't have a clue about how people really talk, all in the service of making various racial issues obvious to middle America...and to a completely insipid New Age soundtrack that attempts to keep the audience awake when nothing is happening (and succeeds because of how annoying it is). But, hey, all you need is slick cinematography and a good PR machine and no one will be the wiser, judging from the IMDb rating. "City of Hope" did the intertwined story thing first & much better, "Do The Right Thing" tackled racism far more subtly than this schlock fest, and "Falling Down" did the angry LA racism thing much more believably. "Crash" epitomizes everything that is wrong with America: it's unoriginal, it lacks subtlety or believability, it attempts to be all things to all people, and it insists on pronouncing how good it is in spite of its obvious flaws.