A barely watchable cringe-fest that misrepresents racism as an easily fixable issue

Rating: 5/10 (20 July 2017)

"Racist people are bad, but I'm not racist, so I'm not part of the problem." That is the feeling you are supposed to have when you finish watching Crash. I don't know if a movie could possibly have a more harmful message than that.
Crash tells the story of many characters of different ethnic backgrounds who live in LA. Their lives all come together at different points and they learn about racism.
Each character has a bizarre and undeveloped hatred of a racial group. Sandra Bullock's character hates black men. Ludicrous's character hates Asian people. Don Cheadle hates Latino people (but is inexplicably dating a Latina woman?). Why do these people hate these groups? Hell if I know. The movie just sort of assumes that average people are extremely racist for no reason.
The audience cannot connect to any character in the movie because every character is extremely and cartoonishly racist. As soon as you think a character is reasonable, they go and say something outlandishly racist and you have to dislike them. This is by design. If a viewer sees 10 characters in a movie who are all racist, the viewer thinks "I'm special because I'm not racist like them." This is meant to make the audience feel good about themselves. With a Best Picture win from the Academy, obviously this strategy worked.
Racism is not a black and white phenomenon, there is a lot of gray area. Every person operates with subtle racial biases in their day-to-day lives. A movie like 2017's Get Out depicts this form of "casual racism." Some people are more than just casually racist, and that racism usually stems from something about their background- maybe they were raised in a town where racism was accepted, maybe they had a bad experience with a person of a specific racial group and have since projected that onto an entire ethnic group. The point is that the racism depicted in the movie is unrealistic and harmful to show to audiences, since people will believe it.
This movie almost serves as a "field guide" for racist catchphrases. Characters hurl disgustingly racist insults at each other constantly throughout the movie. A person who hopes to use racism to put somebody else down now has this entire movie as an example for funny and clever racist sayings. The actors are given such over-the-top intensely racist dialogue and it is all played in such an overdramatic and serious way that the audience can't help but cringe and feel secondhand embarrassment while watching the movie.
The "cathartic" ending to the movie was actually disgusting. Sandra Bullock like sprains her foot and her black maid drives her to the hospital so she has an epiphany and doesn't hate black people anymore. I'm not even joking that actually happens. All the other characters have similar "epiphany" moments so none of them are racist anymore. Portraying racism as a simple thing that can be cured just like that is mind-bogglingly stupid. Racial biases don't just go away, and it's shamefully incorrect to imply that. If racism was easily cured, then it wouldn't be an issue.
As I struggle to think of positives about the movie, I have to mention that Ludicrous's acting was actually very good in this movie. He's primarily a musician but he elevated the script really well and had a lot of charisma in his few scenes. I don't know much about his acting career, but he certainly impressed me. Another positive is the cinematography. There are a lot of cool-looking shots with a dynamic camera that is always tracking. There are also a lot of stylish transitions which look nice.
In total, Crash isn't just unworthy of its Academy Awards, it's actually one of the worst movies I have ever seen. It is smug, overdramatic, and actually more harmful than good in spreading its anti-racist message. Don't watch this movie.