rating:
(out of
4 stars)United States; 2004
Directed by Paul Haggis; produced by Don Cheadle, Paul Haggis, Mark R. Harris, Cathy Schulman, Bob Yari; screenplay by Paul Haggis, Bobby Moresco
Starring Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Tony Danza, Keith David, Michael Peņa, Jennifer Esposito, William Fichtner, Brendan Fraser, Terrence Howard, Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges, Thandie Newton, Ryan Phillippe
Below you will find a temporary review for this film. The real (better, more complete) review will be online very soon.
When I first heard the title of this movie I thought I did not want to see
it, since it reminded me of David Cronenberg's film 'Crash' from 1996. That
movie was about people who got sexually aroused by car crashes, a movie that
did its best with the subject. Thank God this is about something else, a
real issue, an important one. Here is a movie that does not judge, simply
observes different characters, and shows that there is both good and bad in
most of us.
It follows a couple of characters with different backgrounds; rich, poor,
black, white, Hispanic, etc. We see how these people react to one another,
most of the time out of prejudice. We see how a white woman grabs the arm of
her husband when two young black men are walking up to them, how one of
those black men thinks every white person is a racist, how a white cop pulls
a car over only because the people in it are not white and how his white
partner disagrees heavily but can't do much about it, how a couple of people
think a young Hispanic man belongs to a gang. We also see that some of the
prejudice, although it is wrong to have it, turns out to be true, how the
same white cop helps a black woman out of a burning car, how he's angry
because of the health of his father that could explain his behavior. Not
justify it, only explain.
There are many more story lines and characters but I just want to give you
some examples. There is prejudice in everyone, I guess, and this movie shows
how that can lead to terrible things. The film has the same kind of
structure as Robert Altman's 'Short Cuts' or P.T. Anderson's 'Magnolia'.
Some of the story lines cross, some are on their own, but they all deal with
the same subject and come together in the end through a big event. In
'Crash' that is a car crash although we have seen a lot of crashes in
another way already. Writer director Paul Haggis, who wrote the perfect
'Million Dollar Baby', knows how to keep everything clear for us. Although
there are some coincidences that would not have worked in a lesser movie it
serves a higher goal here, making it work.
The performances are all pretty powerful. Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Jennifer
Esposito, rapper Ludicrous, Thandie Newton, Ryan Phillippe and a lot of
others are as effective as they can be. The only distraction comes from
Sandra Bullock, not because she does a bad job, but because she is too big a
star. For me it felt I was more watching Sandra Bullock than an effective
character in a powerful story. Still, 'Crash' is a great movie that has to
nerve to observe instead of judge.