MOVIES :: May 11, 2005

"Crash" scorches along dramatic freeway

By SUSAN W. WOODS

Officer Ryan (Matt Dillon) holds Christine (Thandie Newton) for a dramatic moment in ‘Crash.’

Director Paul Haggis, who won a 2004 Oscar for best adapted screenplay for “Million Dollar Baby,” has written and directed a taut, emotionally charged film that outrages, affects and stimulates the mind. What more can you ask of a film?

Haggis uses the screenwriting technique found in “Grand Canyon,” “Magnolia” and Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts” — random, diverse characters from the many socio and economic levels of Los Angeles interlock over the course of two days. The film’s title refers to not only the car crashes that open and close the film but the crashing of racial prejudice, intolerance, legal and social injustices and man’s need for compassion and love.

America has been called the “melting pot” of the world. Los Angeles is one of the largest melting pots, with millions of people from all over the world trying to realize the American Dream. In “Crash,” this melting pot is boiling over and revealing that wealth and social status are not a guarantee for happiness and personal fulfillment.

The opening scenes have some of the most shocking, incisive and brutal racial epithets ever spoken onscreen. You can feel the heat of the pent up anger and hatred released after the confrontations. Each confrontation leads to another, like an atomic reaction.

But don’t be discouraged by the heavy subject matter of this film. It is a work of art, threading multiple plots, intense confrontations, fabulous acting and thought-provoking themes into a vibrant, passionate and powerful portrait of American life in a city of millions of people from all walks of life united by hundreds of miles of freeways.

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