Apparently writer/director Paul Haggis has previously made work for TV, and this, his cinematic debut, has been well received by audiences and critic alike.
The patronising tagline; "You think you know who you are. You have no idea.", immediately grasps the emotionally starved public into thinking that this film will uncover some fundamental truth about human nature. This is okay, but then the plot synopsis (or at least the one I have seen) proudly states; "A car accident brings together a group of strangers in Los Angeles". This is an oversimplification! Crash - not to be confused with David Cronenberg's titled movie, or indeed the 1922 comedy - is a much larger patchwork of stories with at least four car accidents to its credit. Using the now familiar "multiple characters, interrelated short stories" formula (MUCHISS) our attention follows the action between the different plots, all tied together by a few coincidences and the emotive theme of race.
This last paragraph does not give a great reason to see the film, but the movie is well constructed, and well acted. The script, or dialogue, is also very amusing, or shocking, depending on how sensitive one is to racial etiquette.
To attempt to summarise the film plot there are 7 different sets of characters. These are as follows; the African-American detective and his South-American partner and lover, another duo of white police patrolmen - one racist the other not, a DA and his wife, a couple of gang bangers, a South-American electrician trying to improve his life, a TV series director and his wife, and a struggling Persian corner shop owner battered by crime. Only some of them come into direct contact with each other. To complicate matters there are other supporting cast members - including an Eastern-European, or maybe Russian, car ringer - who all have a variable amount of input into the plot. Matt Dillon steals the acting limelight in a potentially difficult role as the racist cop. As there are many other good actors and actresses in the film to list them all would be tedious and unnecessary.
Going back to the film construction, Haggis' technique seems very designed for TV, and whilst I felt this was a little bit of a waste for a cinema release, the effect is a more attention grabbing piece which adds more than a little claustrophobia. This latter point is almost certainly a direct translation from the feeling that people often get from living in a huge, sprawling city like LA.
Returning to my original point about the film, and its tagline. Its message seems to be (IMHO) that everyone is racist to a degree but common humanity can, sometimes, overrule prejudice. It is interesting to use this review as an excuse to comment on the entire issue of racism. Racism, once again IMHO, seems to me to be a symptom of a more fundamental human behavior trait, which is for groups of people to form based on arbitrary points of commonality, and then compete with other groups. This could then be reduced still further to different biological species competing for desired resources. Currently as we consider ourselves to be civilised people, racism is regarded as a bad thing. It is important to remind ourselves that racism is an ever present threat which in not so recent history has sometimes been positively encouraged. One also can see the similarity between racism and other conflicts between peoples of differing religion. Even the unimpressive "Goths vs Chavs" teen conflict is an example of this overwhelmingly natural influence. It is right and proper to condemn and prevent it, but sensible to understand the reasons for it.
Overall an entertaining piece about the human condition with a slight hint of emotional pornography slipped in to wow the crowds.
**** (out of 5)
