Crash

BluRay edition 2010

Lionsgate Entertainment

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Australian Release

Crash is a powerful film about racial prejudice as seen through the eyes of a number of people in Los Angeles. Some are victims; some are in a position of sufficient power to exercise their prejudices on others. Even those at the bottom of the heap need someone to feel superior to, so we have the young Negro carjacker holding forth angrily about the white people who suppress him, but he is superior to them when he has a gun. There is the white police officer who treats black suspects with the utmost prejudice and enjoys humiliating them – but his elderly father is at the bottom of the health system and can’t get treatment for a crippling urinary tract infection. The Iraqi store owner who buys a gun to give himself some power is out to shoot the black locksmith who changed his lock but warned him that the door wasn’t up the job – will he commit murder to regain his sense of manhood? Even the black District Attorney, at the height of his profession, has his own prejudices.

These people and many others have their lives intertwined through a series of events. Some come out of it stronger, some will not survive. There is a bit of good in each one but it is submerged in the stereotype prejudice and it will take a major trauma in each life to give their good side a chance to emerge. Meanwhile the consequences of their racism is only getting them deeper into a prejudice of their own making.

The acting is superb, as you would expect from the likes of Don Cheadle or Sandra Bullock or Matt Dillon. The plot doesn’t give them a lot to work with but each still manages to put a bit of life into their characters. Director Paul Haggis has broken away from the almost-universal dark and gloomy look of such films to give us daytime shots and richly-lit interiors. Apparently the sun does sometimes shine in L.A.

The film won a number of Academy Awards including Best Picture, and I think the awards were honestly earned. The film may not be everyone’s style of entertainment but I enjoyed it.

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This review will appear in Volume 3 No. 4 of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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