Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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30 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Is the Academy kidding with this?, April 25, 2006
Like a bad student film with big-name stars in its cast, Paul Haggis' puerile and self-important "Crash" is a masterpiece for the easily impressed. Filled with bathos and bombast, and more implausible coincidences than an 800-page novel by Charles Dickens (and no offense meant to Mr. Dickens), "Crash" plays less like a movie and more like some underachiever's dissertation for a Sociology course entitled Racism 101. (Racist white cop fondles black woman in front of her husband at routine traffic stop...pause projector...discuss what this scene shows about racism in our society...resume film...same racist white cop pulls same black woman to safety from burning wreckage...pause projector...discuss what this scene says about the possibility of redemption for every individual...etc.). Astonishingly, this piece of mealy-mouthed claptrap won the Academy Award for the Best Picture of 2005.
Cribbing its interlocking, multi-character format from "Short Cuts," "Grand Canyon," "Magnolia," "13 Conversations About One Thing" and a whole host of other similar but far superior films, Haggis' work purports to tell us that everyone - and I mean EVERYONE - living in Los Angeles is a thoroughgoing racist and bigot and, even more amazingly, spends twenty-four hours a day giving voice to their prejudice. Forget about political correctness; these people talk about race, race and nothing but race for nigh unto two hours in ways that show that Haggis is completely tone deaf when it comes to how people in the real world actually speak. This is a movie devoid of a single plausible moment (you know that verisimilitude is not high on this film's agenda when it starts snowing in Los Angeles!); it's a movie in which characters act completely without reason or motivation and in which every event that happens, no matter how idiotic or ridiculous, does so in the service of the message. On the level of dramaturgy alone, "Crash" is an unmitigated disaster and a blueprint for how not to make a movie.
Unfortunately, as "Crash" itself begins to crash and burn, an awful lot of fine people wind up getting trapped inside the wreckage. A largely talented cast is wasted on an assortment of poorly written, shallow characters, and Haggis has no idea of how to create either drama or tension in any of the scenes he shows us. The moody score by Mark Isham does its best to make it all seem powerful and important, but the sheer incompetence of the writing and directing rob the film of both those qualities. Indeed, rarely has a movie been as full of itself as "Crash" is, and rarely has a movie explored such a serious and important subject in as pretentious and superficial a manner. Perhaps the most insulting aspect of the film is how easily it bestows redemption on even its most wretched characters, as if all of life's problems could be so easily wrapped up in time for the closing credits. As others before me have pointed out, this is indeed a "feel good" movie about racism, the very last thing a movie about racism should ever be.
If you can buy a film in which an assortment of whiney, unappealing characters hurl racial invectives at one another for an hour and a half, then turn around and throw themselves into each others' arms in time for the tear-stained finale, then "Crash" may be the movie for you. But if you find yourself laughing rather than weeping through the course of the story, don't say you hadn't been warned beforehand.
What could all the fine folk in the Motion Picture Academy have been thinking?
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25 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
I already saw this...when it was called MAGNOLIA, SHORT CUTS, GRAND CANYON..., March 10, 2006
CRASH...even the title smacks of obviousness.
Rarely have I seen a film handle the issue of racism so clumsily an didactically, and what stuns me even more is that people are actually buying into the ugly, facile stereotypes employed by the screenplay. Paul Haggis' attempt at creating a mosaic of interlocking vignettes fails on fronts, chiefly because the director has little understanding of how people interact. Instead of drawing out subtle communications between the multi-ethnic characters, he goes right for the jugular with laughably overwrought demonstrations of how blacks, whites, Hispanics and Asians are all oh-so mean to each other. I've seen Sesame Street episodes with more nuance (and better acting, too, but that's a whole different issue). CRASH panders to the mainstream audience with its reductive portrayal of race relations, and makes no apologies for its ludcrious plot contrivances and overly-tidy characterizations. The fact that members of the Academy thought this was the best film of 2005 is stunning and disgusting on just about every conceivable level. If you want to see a real film about racism in America, rent Spike Lee's DO THE RIGHT THING and avoid this vacant, worthless imitation.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Everyone in the U.S. should see this film, January 1, 2006
My friends have been telling me I should see this film since it was released last spring. Katrina showed us that racism was alive and well in our country, but this film said it first.
The story is another six degrees of separation situation with characters of several ethnic backgrounds. The performances are excellent. Sandra Bullock who has been given much too little chance to show her true dramatic acting skills gives a finely detailed performance as a spoiled upper class woman whose world is being attacked by the foreigners but who finds in the end that it is the foreigners who are her friends and the ones she can trust.
Matt Dillon continues to get better and better with each role. His performance as a policeman whose life trying to help his retired ailing father is making so him so angry that he takes it out on everyone he meets on the job. His arguments with his father's HMO, and the overworked doctor assigned to his father will bring recognition to those of us who have been in this position. I can only hope Dillon will finally win an Oscar one of these days. Don Cheatle is there playing a police detective torn between his job and his dysfunctional family, and Thandie Newton gives yet one more excellent performance as an African American wife whose first encounter with Dillon's racist policeman is followed by a second where each of them learns things about the other which turns each into a human being instead of a stereotype. Finally, Ryan Phillippe plays a rookie cop who learns, the hard way, that you shouldn't judge someone until you have walked a mile in their shoes.
This film shows that the good guys and the bad guys are not always evident at first glance. It also shows that a good turn will be remembered and may cause someone to act against their own interests because of it.
This picture was mentioned on a list of Oscar possibilities although the candidates have not yet been named. It should definitely be a contender.
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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 3 months ago by - Durrkk
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