Crash (2005)

Crash
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Review #78 of 365
Film: Crash (2005) [R] 107 minutes
WIP: $14.00
When 2nd Seen: 29 March 2006
Where Viewed: Cinemark Movies 10, Rochester, NY
Time: 4:50 p.m.
Review Dedicated to: Matt Teo C. of Chicago, IL

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Some times there are micro-ripples in the space-time continuum where you least expect them to intersect with and impact your own life. Not only is this an underlying theme of the Academy Award®-winning Best Picture Crash, but also of this review. As it happens, I am in Rochester, NY, and in scanning what was available for viewing yesterday, I noticed that Crash just happened to be playing at the Cinemark Movies 10 theatre at 4:50 p.m. smack dab between the hockey game I was attending and the opening ceremony for the USA Boys Hockey National Tournament which Rochester, NY is hosting. So, here I am with an opportunity to see Crash for a second time, but on the big screen with the real movie theatre sound system with an audience full of real people who might, I thought, be seeing it for the first time. In my case, this was a complex set of wonderful micro-ripples intersections that aligned to make this possible for me to add a review for the Best Picture and keep within my rules for a movieEVERYday—recall that the movies must be on the big screen in a real movie theatre. This was wonderful because I was able to accomplish seeing the film and attending my other desired functions. In the process, I was reminded of the value of the 2nd run movie houses in the USA which are possibly over-looked by many fans of movies precisely because they are usually not overly useful to people that go to the movies, like myself, as close to the actual release date as possible. With the real cost of going to the movies constantly on the rise and the ever-increasing cost and diminishing size of movie theatre refreshments (hey, they have to be able to make a profit themselves when they make so little off the showing of a film unless is runs for many weeks—you might not realize that movie theatres take a gamble on every movie they run whereby the studio gets the bulk of the money off each ticket the first week, a little less the second week, and so on, until if the movie runs long enough they get close to equalizing), incredibly busy lives we lead and attractive television and cable offerings, and scores of other entertainment possibilities, the second run movie houses offer an alternative with very inexpensive tickets (usually $1-$2—putting the W.I.P. scale to a new challenge since, therefore, just about any movie is worth seeing at a 2nd run movie house and maybe that is how it should be), often reduced prices for concession stand refreshments, and many now with the same quality of projection, sound, and stadium seating of the perceived more luxurious first run theatres. In any case, these may be a very viable resource for people who miss out seeing a great film at the theatre and realize it simply won’t be the same on my television at home.

Now, back to Crash (2005). Like so many on-line databases such as IMDB.com, I will occasionally have to append a (year) to a film title to differentiate it from a previously made movie of the same title. Note, not all films with the same title are re-makes! As it happens, you actually cannot copyright a title which can, therefore, be used again and again. So, hence, this Crash of 2005 shares the title with a David Cronenberg film of 1996 also called Crash but with a very different plot and reason for being called Crash. So, Crash (20005) won Best Picture and has been one of the most openly criticized Best Picture winners in recent memory—though there was quite a bit of controversy swirling around the nomination and awarding of the same prize to A Beautiful Mind due to the fact that the director altered some of the reality of this ‘based on a true story’ film. Much of the controversy for Crash has been due to its win over Brokeback Mountain. Ironically, I gave them both a W.I.P. score of $14 in my Best Movies of 2005 list--I had seen Crash last summer and, therefore, when I made my Top Movies list I included it even though it was not reviewed in my blog until today. For me, they were a clear tie in greatness and importance and contribution to the history of filmmaking, though both, in my mind, were a dollar short of Munich—a movie which I hope, someday, will receive the acclaim it too so richly deserved. In any case, I would have had no way, really of differentiating them at first. I would have had to go back and more carefully dissect them to pull out which was the more deserving film. I definitely empathize with the voters having to select between them. I will also offer my own hypothesis as to why Crash (2005) beat Brokeback Mountain. My feeling on the matter, and I appreciate this opportunity to weigh in on it, is that many voters felt that Brokeback had achieve sufficient acclaim with its Golden Globe® award and non-stop publicity campaigns by those hoping to promote and those hoping to squelch its box-office success. Meanwhile, there was nobody saying much of anything when Crash came out last summer with its own brand of incredibly volatile material—racism today in the USA. When I first saw Crash (2006), I told everyone I worked with that this film was a must-see film. It was shocking, terrifying, mesmerizing, in your face, cold as steel, hot as fire, raw, bitter, sweet, unparalleled. I even told a few people at the time that it might well be one of the best films of the year. Not many people believed me, until they took the risk and saw it for themselves. Meanwhile, it came out amidst a summer sea of blockbusters last May that usurped all of its spectacle. Much like Cinderella Man (which might have gotten more nominations too were it not for the antics of Russell Crowe, the previous year’s win by Million Dollar Baby, and it’s June release date; but was still a very good and highly over-looked movie from last year [$12.50 on the W.I.P. Best of 2005 list]), Crash was an Oscar®-worthy film released in spring/summer which is always a risk. So, I think the Academy voters, when faced with a difficult decision and their penultimate desire for fairness, equity, and spreading of the wealth, decided to give the award to Crash. When you see the film, you will realize that they made an exceptional choice for it was highly-deserving. It is also a film that will tamper with every emotional state the human mind can reach. If you do not think you are a racist, you believe that racism ceased after the Civil Rights movement, you were for or against affirmative action, you were for or against immigration reform, or you recognize a desire in yourself to grow above utilizing stereotypes to guide your life and wish to move on to a new level where you can actually value people for their individual strengths and frailties (which we all, every one of us, have without exception) without presumptions based on the color of a person’s skin, their ethnic background, the religion they practice, the national origin of their last name, their sexual orientation, then I would highly encourage you to find a way to see Crash (2005).

Director/writer Paul Haggis has created a magnificently intertwined set of stories that force some internal dialog on the issues of racism and prejudice in the USA today. He does this with a cast of thousands (exaggeration) but truly dozens of gem performances including: Sandra Bullock and Brendan Fraser who play the wife of and Asst. DA for LA County who are carjacked by African American kids, Don Cheadle and Jennifer Esposito who play a LAPD detectives and lovers assigned to solve the mysterious murder of a fellow police officer, Terrence Howard and Thandie Newton who brilliantly portray a Hollywood power couple who realize that outside the studio lots their racial make-up is all that matters, Matt Dillon and Ryan Phillippe who portray seasoned and rookie LAPD police officers on the mean streets of LA where the junior officer will get lessons for which he hardly bargained, Shaun Toub and Marina Sirtis who portray a Persian shopkeeper couple who will face both ends of the immigrant card leading Toub’s character to exhibit some of the most explosive behavior in the film, Michael Peña plays a locksmith mislabeled and misidentified throughout the film who has an incredibly special relationship with his daughter played by Ashlyn Sanchez, Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges and Larenz Tate play with every stereotype of the young, African American male, and I have only begun to scratch the surface, for, remember, the lives of all of these people are interconnected by at most two degrees of separation as the film unfolds. Crash is a movie that will percolate in the recesses of your brain for a long time to come. This was all the more apparent to me as I watched it yesterday for the second time not having seen it for eight months or so, and I sat thinking all too often, “Oh my gosh, that was from Crash? I thought that was a whole movie of its own.” It is hard to believe, in other words, that there are so many powerful climactic-scale scenes in one film. I will share just a few glimmers here to add additional enticement for you to see this film.

As mentioned Don Cheadle plays an LAPD detective, but what I didn’t say is that he also looks after his heroine-addicted mother. There is an incredibly powerful scene where she takes him to task for not looking after his younger brother properly once he ‘made it’ in the world. What she doesn’t realize, because she is out of it most of the time, is that it has not been the ‘perfect’ younger brother who has been secretly bringing her groceries when the milk in her refrigerator has gone sour, it has been him. There is a delightfully chilling scene when Sandra Bullock’s character who isn’t ‘racist’ but whom constantly slings racial stereotypes at her staff (housekeeper, gardner, etc.) falls down the stairs and finds herself, after hours of laying at the bottom bruised and broken, rescued by her housekeeper, Maria, to whom she then says, “Do you want to hear something funny?...You’re the best friend I’ve got.” This scene was ironic on so many levels it typifies the way Mr. Haggis puts the issues right there in your face to see what they really look like. Finally, and again, there are at least 35 scenes like these--I am picking to mention just a few and not like a bad movie preview where they put all 3 hilarious scenes in the preview and there is nothing left in the film, this film is a treasure trove. There is a very short yet poignant scene where Office Ryan (Matt Dillon) confronts his newly reassigned junior Officer Hanson (Ryan Philippe) in the parking lot knowing that Hanson has requested the reassignment due to accusations that Ryan is a racist cop—which he may well be—and says to him, “You think you know who you are?...You have no idea.” And, in that brief exchange, he sadly epitomizes the justification too many people wrongly use for their own prejudices. I am ashamed to admit that my biological, maternal grandmother was a very racist woman. My mother had to hold my 7th birthday party at a time when she wouldn’t be around so I could invite my best friend, who was black, to my party. When I was in high school, I asked her, “Grammy, why are you so racist against black people.” Her reply to me was quick and cut like a knife, “A black man nearly killed your uncle. When he was a little boy, he was riding his bicycle and was nearly killed by a black man driving his car all over the road.” To this I asked her, “What if the driver had been white, Grammy, would you hate all white people?” She answered, “Of course not, the point is that you have to stick to your own kind.” From that moment forward, I decided that I would do everything in my power to be as strongly the opposite of thought structure from my grandmother as possible. It was an incredibly painful experience, and I lost all respect for her. As far as I was concerned, she was no longer my grandmother. When she died, I wept not for the loss of her, but for how sad her life had been for she spent so much of it harboring hatred. Eventually, I have come to believe that the challenge our USA society must over come is the hate mongering. There is so much hatred spewed in the average hour of talk radio it is terrifying. Because I had a mother who permitted me to grow up without the same hatred for people of different races with which she was raised, I know that it is possible to raise the next generation of children without the biases, prejudices, and hatred of the previous generation, but only if we are able to recognize the problem exists and do something about it. I applaud the cast, crew, and producers of Crash for risking their time, talent, and treasure on the making of this film to help as many people as possible on all sides of the issues realize that we must be in this together. We must put an end to the hate. There is no way that we were intended by any supreme being or law of nature to be creatures who bear so much hatred for each other. I will apologize here for deviating from the conventional movie review style and for venturing too far into the socio-political realm. However, I do believe that this is one of the most important challenges our world faces and that it is the source of much of the world’s problems. Therefore, I do feel justified, and I appreciate your time in listening/reading my thoughts on these incredibly salient issues. Please let the ripples of this film intersect your own life.

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These additional posters from Academy Award(R)-winning Best Picture Crash are now available for purchase. Click a poster icon to see it and many other products from the film.

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Now Available for Purchase on DVD

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Crash (UMD For Sony PlayStation Portable) (2005)

Crash (Widescreen Version) [DVD] (2005) DVD

Crash [DVD] (2005) DVD

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