Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Well intentioned, but over rated, July 12, 2006
This film tugs at every emotion and stereotype you can imagine, however, it often tugs them in unintended ways. Starting with the opening shot of two young youths complaining about racism and profiling... well meaning and impactful, yet, the exact thing that they are complaining about, they do, completely unravelling all of their arguments... While I expect the movie intended to set up the dualism of racism and predjudice in many of its situations, it goes to extremes beyond what is required to drive the story forward.
However, let us not detract from the performances of Matt Dillion, Sandra Bullock and Ryan Phillippe. While the movie did win the BEST PICTURE award and deserved the nomination (but not the award), I think it's a bit overrated but enjoyable none-the-less.
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20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
I expected much more, May 28, 2006
I bought this film because of the academy and was engaged upon my first viewing but not blown away. It's well acted, well written and very entertaining, but there is nothing absolutely nothing special about it. I have to say that after seeing it on DVD it does NOT hold up to repeat viewings, because of its simple plot and wooden characters.
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20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not "best picture" ... not by a long shot., March 27, 2006
The hype over Crash and its alleged insight into bigotry and intolerance in America may best serve as a sobering reminder of the superficiality of the public debate on these issues. Sadly, Crash's approach may be miles wide, but it's inches deep.
First, Crash's characters are, at best, stereotypes: the bigoted cop with a heart of gold, the successful black man under the thumb of whitey, the hispanic mechanic who is also the soft-hearted family man, the shrewish, friendless wife, and on and on. Some critics try to forgive Crash on the grounds that these characters (more appropriately, caricatures) are archetypes in some highly tuned modern fable--that there is some essential, transcendent truth that rises from these conceptualized people. These defenses are little more than examples of The Emperor's New Clothes. Characters in a play or movie can serve many purposes. However, none of them in Crash are served by characters that are, to put it bluntly, fake. In fact, the characters had the feel of people that one might invent if you lived in an ivory tower and never really encountered a flesh and blood person.
Second, the events in Crash, symbolic or not, appear shoe-horned into the story--relying on coincidences, or, indeed, the improbable, to make points for which such deus ex machina moments are hardly necessary. I felt as manipulated as the woman who finds herself rescued by the police officer who molested her. Sorry, but rule number one of storytelling is that miraculous coincidences that advance the plot or make a "point" are the tools of the inexperienced and inartful. Crash is littered with them. And even in instances where the miraculous doesn't save the day, Crash resorts to sappy moments of unconvincing enlightenment, such as the rich wife who breaks a leg and then has the revelation that the maid she abuses is the best friend she has. It makes my stomach turn just reliving that moment.
The entirety of Crash, in fact, has this feel of looking at people and society through a glass that doesn't let you touch them, speak to them, or even hear them. It's like the uninformed meditations of royalty on the problems of the common man. And maybe that's why it appealed to so many members of the Academy.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Provocative psychological drama
Before seeing 2005's "Crash" I had, of course, heard the usual criticisms -- it's too contrived, unrealistic, depressing, heavy-handed, preachy, too much cussing, blah, blah,...
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Published 2 months ago by - Durrkk
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