Crash (2004)

Plot: The film deals with several characters during a two day period in Los Angeles, where their stories interweave. We have a black LAPD detective who is estranged from his mother, his criminal younger brother and his gang associate, a white District Attorney and his pampered wife, a racist white police officer who disgusts his younger partner, an African American Hollywood director and his wife who must deal with the white racist police officer, a Persian-immigrant who is wary of others and a Hispanic locksmith and his young daughter.

Review: Crash is a masterpiece and one of the most brilliant and more important films I've ever seen.

What I like about the film's gripping and intense plot is that it deals with racism in a direct matter. I also like that almost every character in the film is racist or prejudice in some way or another. Usually with films that involve racism, we have only one or two characters that are racist and the rest aren't. Practically every character has their flaws and I like that. It makes the film feel more realistic in a sense.

The film's plot feels very real to me. It doesn't feel like a melodramatic, over the top film about different people with different lives. We see the stories of different people and how they live and what they think of others. It's ordinary people.

The acting in this is simply phenomenal. I think with this kind of film, you can't have weak links in your cast. The cast is quite large so I'm not going to bother to point out every single actor. The reason is because the praise would be all be the same. All of the cast members were amazing and brilliantly played their roles. All of them were frighteningly convincing.

One thing that struck me this is that most of the characters aren't really that sympathetic. We have moments where we feel sympathy for them, but we rarely feel bad for them throughout the entire film. I think there are only two characters that I felt sympathy for throughout the entire film. That was Daniel (Michael Pena), the locksmith who is trying to do what he can to provide for his family and Christine (Thandie Newton), who is sexually molested by the racist cop (played by Matt Dillon). We do have moments where we have sympathy for some characters, but like I said, it's not everlasting.

The setting of Los Angeles is interesting and I like that we see many different sides of LA. I think that we expect to see a glamorous and beautiful city. Instead, we see the dark, poor and ugly sides of the city. I think Paul Haggis, the genius writer and director, had the right idea of showing us that even a city like LA can have its flaws, just like the characters that inhabit it.

Even though I think they did a fine job with portraying the different ethnicity's in this, I think the writers stereotyped the Asians in this film a little too much. That's just my own opinion.

Crash is a powerful, intense and brilliant film that I think should be seen by everybody.

Rating: 5/5