Crash

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to watch a movie with two of my best friends. After debating over which to see, we decided on the low key, social awareness flick Crash (even though they had both seen it before). I found the movie so captivating that I decided to once again don the role of movie critic to help promote it.

To begin, you MUST go see it. About thirty minutes into the movie, I recall thinking to myself, “I need to see this again.” There were so many realities exemplified that I couldn’t really focus on them all. To be sure, the obvious social issues were well explained and displayed, but I was also intrigued at the many subplots that I’d imagine went under the radar by most of the audience. And if you can watch this movie and nothing is either amplified for you or you don’t learn something about how society works, then you suck as a human being.

The movie is set in present-day Los Angeles, CA. And best I can tell the movie covers about 48 hours of screen time. You are immediately immersed into very important footage, and if you don’t pay attention from the get go, you might miss out on the fact that the movie actually ends where it starts.

Among the many characters you become acquainted with are a Black police officer and his “White” partner, played by Don Cheadle and Jennifer Esposito, respectively. Rapper Ludacris and actor Larenz Tate play well educated but criminal college students. Sandra Bullock and her District Attorney husband (played by Brendan Fraser) are depicted as affluent people who use the services of lower class minorities, but try to separate themselves from minorities and their problems if at all possible. Matt Dillon is a know-it-all, racist cop who’s training his rookie partner (Ryan Phillipe) in his mold.

There’s also an affluent Black couple, an “Arab” storeowner and his family, a “China-man” minding his own “business,” and a Mexican repair man and his family present in the movie.

What did I like? I enjoyed that although there were many concurrent storylines playing out, no 1 storyline superseded the others (a tough task considering some of the big name actors in the cast). I also liked that each storyline played a significant role in all the others, no matter how distant the storylines might’ve seemed at the time. The framing and the timelining in this movie was superb.

Too often in society we are afraid to speak about certain flaws in the law or about race-relations, or about religious differences, etc. This movie made light of that in a number of subtle, and a few obvious, ways.

One of the big issues made light of was racial misconceptions. There was a Latina that was mistaken for Mexican and called White; a non-chinese Asian who was mistaken for Chinese; Persians mistaken for Arabs. And though we all know (or should know) better than to just assume someone’s racial identity, apathy too often lends itself to such mistakes or mis-identifications.

One subtle point made was in reference to some of the flaws with affirmative action. Another was centered around people who did the things they did just to keep up appearances with the family/media/community, although they may have felt differently about a particular situation and/or knew that they were shunning people that were always there for them when the family/media/community was not.

The biggest subtlety that I enjoyed was Guns. I think in EVERY storyline of the movie, guns played a major role. Essentially guns represented power. If you had one, you had the power. If you didn’t have a gun, then you were subject to do whatever the person(s) with a gun wanted you to. It was simply a bullying device. The grimey cops that harassed the affluent Black couple used it as a bullying device; the Persian storeowner bought one for protection, but ended up using it as a threatening weapon of supposed vengeance; the wayward Black college students used it as their intimidating tool, etc. Everyone seemed to have a gun or was confronted by one.

Realizing this made me expand that notion and apply it to the world we live in both domestically and internationally. We have a serious issue with Guns here in the USA, and the only reason that groups such as the NRA advocate so hard for them is because they want power. Countless unjust and pointless deaths like that of Amadou Diallo in NYC a couple years ago come about because of Guns. We have a serious Gun problem in this nation and it needs to be addressed. You have but to ask one question and one question only: Who really needs a gun? (In my opinion the answer is nobody, and I point to other countries with less such deaths as my basis in a blog that I started two months ago, and will post once I finish it)

Internationally speaking, each country is essentially seeking a bigger gun. Why? Nuclear Arms means power. The USA is leading the pack in that regard. As in the words of Princeton Religion Professor Cornell West, we’re too worried about “power, power, power…greed, greed, greed,” when we should be concerned with “justice, justice, justice, and love, love, love.” But that too is another blog.

There was one thing that I didn’t particularly like that was depicted in the movie, but I don’t know if it was intentional or not. I’d imagine that it was on purpose since the movie seemed to be so incredibly well thought out in every other way. I won’t get into what I’m referring to here because I’ve already written too much.

In any case, don’t just wait for it to come out on DVD. It would behoove everyone to actually go watch this movie. Then once it’s over, have a discussion about the issues that were portrayed. Better yet, leave a comment here at The Vortex about what you thought about the movie.

So go see it; Crash!

-Maelstrom

I was delighted to see this review on the movie on CNN’s website this past week. So if you don’t believe me, take their word for it:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Movies/06/03/film.crash.reut/index.html