Product Description

They all live in Los Angeles. And in the next 36 hours, they will collide.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3222 in DVD
• Brand: Lions Gate
• Released on: 2005-09-06
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, Korean, Persian, Spanish
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 112 minutes

Features

• This compelling urban thriller tracks the volatile intersection of a multiethnic cast of characters struggling to overcome their fears as they careen in and out of one another's lives. In the gray area between black and white, victim and aggressor, during the next 36 hours, the will all collide. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: MYSTERY/SUSPENSE Rating: R Age: 031398179382 UPC

Amazon.com
Movie studios, by and large, avoid controversial subjects like race the way you might avoid a hive of angry bees. So it's remarkable that Crash even got made; that it's a rich, intelligent, and moving exploration of the interlocking lives of a dozen Los Angeles residents--black, white, latino, Asian, and Persian--is downright amazing. A politically nervous district attorney (Brendan Fraser) and his high-strung wife (Sandra Bullock, biting into a welcome change of pace from Miss Congeniality) get car-jacked by an oddly sociological pair of young black men (Larenz Tate and Chris "Ludacris" Bridges); a rich black T.V. director (Terrence Howard) and his wife (Thandie Newton) get pulled over by a white racist cop (Matt Dillon) and his reluctant partner (Ryan Phillipe); a detective (Don Cheadle) and his Latina partner and lover (Jennifer Esposito) investigate a white cop who shot a black cop--these are only three of the interlocking stories that reach up and down class lines. Writer/director Paul Haggis (who wrote the screenplay for Million Dollar Baby) spins every character in unpredictable directions, refusing to let anyone sink into a stereotype. The cast--ranging from the famous names above to lesser-known but just as capable actors like Michael Pena (Buffalo Soldiers) and Loretta Devine (Woman Thou Art Loosed)--meets the strong script head-on, delivering galvanizing performances in short vignettes, brief glimpses that build with gut-wrenching force. This sort of multi-character mosaic is hard to pull off; Crash rivals such classics as Nashville and Short Cuts. A knockout. --Bret Fetzer

Stills from Crash (click for larger image)

From The New Yorker
A brazenly alive and heartbreaking film about the rage and foolishness of intolerance-the mutual abrasions of white, black, Latino, Middle Eastern, and Asian citizens in the great and strange city of Los Angeles. The movie starts off with separate vignettes in which the characters run afoul of each other, say things better left unsaid, and get into terrible trouble. Later, they cross paths again, sometimes in bizarre coincidences that feel exactly right; some of these scenes play out at the edge of insanity, where contentiousness spills over into tragedy or farce. The furiously candid screenplay was written by Paul Haggis and Robert Moresco, and the picture was directed by Haggis, who, in his first time out as director, demonstrates an amazing skill with actors. Don Cheadle, as a withdrawn, melancholy police detective, is the star, and the other players include Terrence Howard and Thandie Newton as an upper-class African-American couple, Brendan Fraser and Sandra Bullock as an L.A. district attorney and his bitchy wife, Chris (Ludacris) Bridges and Larenz Tate as carjackers, Matt Dillon and Ryan Phillippe as cops, and Shaun Toub as an Iranian shopkeeper who thinks everyone is out to cheat him. The gentle electronic score is by Mark Isham. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Gets points for trying, but fails miserably
I admire Crash for trying to tackle a tough issue like racism. I feel that more movies should try and take on such social issues. But Crash does so in such an unrealistic and untruthful way that it is impossible to take seriously or learn anything from.

Below is part of Erik Lundegaard's article for msnbc.com. I obviously did not write it, but I agree with it 100% and could not have said it better myself:


This is the worst best picture winner since "The Greatest Show on Earth" in 1952. It may be worse than that. "Greatest Show" was a dull, bloated romance set against the backdrop of a three-ring circus but at least it didn't pretend to be important. "Crash" thinks it's important. "Crash" thinks it's saying something bold about racism in America.

But what is it saying?

That we all bear some form of racism. That we all "stereotype" other races. That, when pressured, racist sentiments spill out of us as easily as escaped air.

Here's my take. Yes, we all bear some form of racism - that's obvious. Yes, we all "stereotype" other races in some fashion - that's obvious. (Particularly obvious in the Los Angeles of "Crash," where so many characters are stereotypes.) But, no, we don't easily give voice to our racist sentiments. And that's why "Crash" rings so false.

Last month I wrote an article on the best picture nominees (called "Anything But `Crash'") in which I talked about how the most potent form of racism in this country is no longer overt but covert. Once upon a time, yes yes yes, it was overt, which is another reason why "Crash" sucks. It's doing what simple-minded generals do: It's fighting the last war.

The "Crash" quiz
Here, let's take a little quiz. Say you're an Asian woman who has just rear-ended the car in front of you. What do you do? Do you...

Wait in your car until a police officer arrives
Exchange licenses with the driver of the other car
Notice that the driver of the other car is someone who looks like Jennifer Esposito, immediately assume she's Mexican-American (as opposed to, say, Italian-American), and then tell the African-American police officer that "Mexicans no know how to drive."
How about this one? You're talking to a bureaucrat on the phone about getting extra care for your father who is having trouble urinating, and she is not helpful. You ask for her name and she tells you: Shaniqua Johnson. You still need her help. What do you say?

"Shaniqua. That's a beautiful name."
"Shaniqua. You could do a better job of helping my father, who is in pain.
"Shaniqua. Big f---ing surprise that is."
One last one. You've just been told by your hot, hot girlfriend, with whom you're lucky to be sleeping in the first place, that she is not Mexican as you presumed; that her mother is from Puerto Rico and her father is from El Salvador. What do you say?

"I'm sorry, honey. I'm surprised I didn't know that. Now come back to bed."
"Really? How did they meet?"
"Who took [all Latinos] and taught them to park their cars on their lawns?"
And on and on and on. Every scene. Put a little pressure on somebody and they blurt simplistic racist sentiments. Right in the face of someone of that race.

Worse, none of it feels like sentiments these characters would actually say. It feels like sentiments writer/director Paul Haggis imposed upon them to make his grand, dull point about racism, when a more telling point about racism might have emerged if he'd just let them be. "Crash" is like a Creative Writing 101 demonstration of what not to do as a writer. To the Academy this meant two things: Best screenplay and best picture.

The Sandra Bullock/Ludacris scene
A few readers objected to my column last month - and will no doubt object to this one. They felt "Crash" taught them something important about race. More's the pity. They said they learned that even good people do bad things, and even bad people have moments of compassion. Sorry they didn't already know this. They felt like "Crash" was a movie the average person could support. "Average," I guess, is the key word here.

Some agreed with me that the most potent form of racism today is covert rather than overt; but they added that this was a movie, after all, not a book, and in a movie you can't show characters thinking.

Ah, but you can. Paul Haggis even did it in "Crash" - in the scene where Sandra Bullock's character grabs her husband's arm as two black men approach. Her move toward her husband is silent and instinctive, and Ludacris' character suspects she does what she does because he's black, and she's scared of him, but he has no evidence. We only get the evidence later, from her, when she argues with her husband about the Latino locksmith. And even this scene is handled ineptly. She should have argued with her husband upstairs, away from the help. But Haggis wanted her to complain about the Latino locksmith within earshot of the Latino locksmith - because apparently that's how we all do it. Lord knows if I don't trust someone because of their race and/or class I raise my objection within earshot of them. Doesn't everyone?

The main point is that you can dramatize our more covert forms of racism. But here's how bad "Crash" is. Even though the Bullock/Ludacris scene is one of the more realistic scenes in the movie, it is still monumentally simplistic. I have a white female friend who lives close to the downtown area of her city. Usually she walks home from downtown. If she does this after dark, and two men are walking towards her, she'll cross to the other side of the street to avoid them. But if the two men are black? She won't do this, because she's afraid of appearing racist. That's how much of a conundrum race is in this country. "Crash" didn't begin to scratch that surface.

Losing Jim
So why did it win?

There are rumors that older Academy members shied away from even viewing "Brokeback Mountain" for the usual homophobic reasons. Lionsgate also pushed "Crash" on Academy voters; it handed out a record number of DVDs and advertised heavily. I don't know which explanation bothers me more. All I know is I feel sick. It feels like the '72 Olympic basketball finals, when the Russians cheated and won; it feels like the '85 World Series when a blown call in game six tilted the balance towards the Royals. It feels like the good guys wuz robbed.

My friend Jim is more interested in the Academy than anyone I know who isn't involved in the industry. (He's a chauffeur in Seattle.) By early summer he's already talking up possible nominees. The discussion reaches a fever pitch in November and December when the prestige pictures are rolled out and critics make their "best of" announcements. He goes to see these films. He talks about them. He actually cares.

Not anymore.

"Crash's" win did him in. The Academy, he said afterwards, "is not a serious body of voters who vote rationally. If they're influenced by a DVD sales pitch, they're not worth my time."

Are they worth anyone's time? Once again, they showed themselves susceptible to something other than a legitimate search for "the best." Once again, marketing appears to have won. The Academy is 78 years old and acting every bit of it, and last night they took another doddering step towards irrelevancy.

Lot of hype little worth
This movie was an over acted melodramatic exercise in hollywood self stroking. plotlines were predictable, and all but one characters were lacking in humanity. By the middle of the movie I was praying for some on to nuke LA so I wouldn't have to suffer through the rest of this pretentious piece of garbage. The only reason it won oscars was because it was the only nominee accually filmed in LA, and everyone knows hollywood love to stroke itself(SEE WE STILL MAKE THE BEST)even though most of the best movies of the past several years have been made elsewhere

Over-hyped
First let me say that I'm not an angry fan of one of the movies that didn't win the Oscar; this review isn't about that. I didn't read all the other reviews, so I don't know if what I say has been covered, but here's my 2 cents...

After many people recommended that I see this film, I finally broke down and rented it. I can honestly say that it in no way moved me or affected my outlook on life like so many people said it would. It left me asking why this film is so hyped and lauded.

The theme of the story is constantly rammed down your throat and played out by characters who are complete and extreme stereo-types of their races. Matt Dillon and Sandra Bullock's characters are laughingly predictable, as are Ludacris and Larenz Tate. The only thing I found touching about the film was the relationship of the locksmith and his daughter, which took all of 10 minutes of the movie. The other characters were so unredeming and abrasive that I didn't care what happened to them.

The end of the story brings hardly any change in the characters, and those that do are not based in reality. For those who have seen it, look to Sandra Bullock's character as reference. Keep in mind, this is suppose to be a day in the life of these people.

So what do you take away from this film? 'That we are all racists.' How profound.

If you want to see a good film about racism with well thought-out characters that you actually feel for, rent 'American History X'. There is redemeption and emotion 10 times over what you find in 'Crash'.