Crash
Sometimes the greatest films can be the ones that are the most polarizing, a split between those who see its undeniable greatness and those who spew their hateful venom at it for a variety of concocted reasons, but really are haunted by the fact that said film probably managed to touch a very sensitive nerve. Thus is the case with this film, The 2005 Oscar Winner for Best Picture that touched off a firestorm of controversy with its win mostly because it beat out the hyped to the moon Brokeback Mountain for the award, led mostly by the pale virginal types who said that Brokeback was the more âbeautifulâ film (and probably unveiled some truths about themselves) up to the writer of THAT film proclaiming that âCrash was Trashâ and stating in no undue terms that it should NOT have won Best Picture over her Gay Cowboy Love Story. This of course has all since been laughed off as while Brokeback has faded into obscurity, Crash has endured as the most thought-provoking examination of racism that Hollywood has yet produced. Writer / Director Paul Haggis uses a fascinating technique for telling his story, enlisting a large ensemble of characters and having it be that EVERY one of them is flawed to some degree, no good or bad, black or white, but instead all of them an intriguing shade of gray, which makes it much more realistic than most films of this caliber. Borrowing the story structure from Short Cuts and Magnolia, these people all manage to intertwine with each other over the course of the film, with none of them truly stealing the spotlight yet every single one getting a chance to shine. Haggis should be commended for the fact that with THIS cast, every single performer from the big name stars all the way down to the bit parts actually manage to bring their A-game with them, starting with Matt Dillon (the one Oscar nominee from the group who should have won) as a patrol cop who early on commits a horrific act during a traffic stop, yet manages to find redemption in the most ironic way; Terrence Howard as a black TV Writer and Director frustrated with the way network execs want the stereotypical âblackâ elements pushed in his work, who eventually has a fateful showdown with the cops; Don Cheadle as a black LAPD detective investigating a case with racial implications forced to bow when the politics of the matter rear their ugly head; Brendon Fraser and Sandra Bullock as the LA District Attorney and his wife who suffer a trauma after being robbed on the street; Jennifer Esposito as Cheadleâs partner who also happens to be his lover; William Fichtner as a slimy and shadowy assistant to Fraser; Chris âLudacrisâ Bridges and Larenz Tate as two black friends (one a militant, the other more laid back) who are into carjacking, but only from white people; Thandie Newton as Howardâs wife who suffers multiple traumas of her own; Michael Pena as a locksmith who finds himself in over his head when a bedtime story he tells his daughter almost backfires on him; Ryan Philippe as another LAPD cop involved in a number of major events in the film; and Shaun Toub as a Persian store owner who loses his mind when he suffers one indignity after another. All of them are tremendous, plus in smaller parts we have actors as diverse as Tony Danza, Keith David, Loretta Devine, Bruce Kirby, Jack McGee, Marina Sirtis, Bahar Soomekh, and Beverly Todd all hitting it out of the park as well with limited screen time. Haggis deliberately works his way into the viewerâs consciousness: the first half is almost all setup, getting us familiar with the characters themselves so that weâre comfortable with them, and then in the second half he lets go with the âbigâ events of the story perfectly doing so in a way to draw out the viewerâs emotions once weâve become emotionally invested in these people. The end result is the overwhelmingly sobering message that racism, the tendency to hate people in this world who are different than us, will NEVER go away as long as human beings exist, and moreso, that even the most so-called âupstandingâ people in this world are just as capable of being racist as the most lowly Klan member or Black Panther (probably the theme that bothered a lot of the liberal community), but still, the beautiful, positive message of HOPE that shines through is the idea that if we CHOOSE to rise above our racist feelings in the way that we carry ourselves, we may very well be capable of legitimate greatness, which is why this film not only deserved ten times over to win Best Picture, it is also the best film to have been made and released so far in the 21st CenturyâŚ
10/10