Movie Review: Crash

Crash (2005) 

Directed by Paul Haggis

Written by Paul Haggis

Starring Ludacris, Lorenz Tate, Brendan Fraser, Sandra Bullock, Shaun Toub, Matt Dillon, Thandie Newton, Terrence Howard 

Release Date May 6th, 2005

Published May 5th, 2005

Paul Haggis showed the depth of his talents as a writer with his Oscar nominated script for Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby. The natural progression of any filmmaking career has lead Mr. Haggis out from behind the computer keys to behind the camera directing his first feature. Working from his own script, Mr. Haggis has crafted Crash, an intricately plotted and engrossing drama about the futility of violence, the helplessness of anger and the politics of race.

As two well dressed young African American men, Anthony (Rapper, Ludacris) and Peter (Lorenz Tate), walk down an affluently appointed street in Los Angeles discussing race, they are the only black faces to be seen. Even as they dress and act like they belong here, Anthony can't help but note the most minor of slights from the lack of good service in the restaurant they just left to a rich white woman (Sandra Bullock) who crosses the street with her husband (Brendan Fraser) when she see's them.

Anthony asks Peter what makes them so different from all these white people aside from race? They provide an answer to his question by summarily bringing out guns and stealing the couple's SUV. This act touches off a series of events that envelopes a pair of cops played by Matt Dillon and Ryan Phillippe, a detective and his partner played by Don Cheadle and Jennifer Espisito, a locksmith and his family (Michael Pena) an Arab family headed up by Farhad (Shaun Toub) and a black married couple played by Terrence Howard and Thandie Newton.

When Sgt. Ryan (Dillon) and his rookie partner Hanson (Phillippe) get a call that a car jacking has taken place nearby, Ryan pulls over the next similar looking car he sees. Despite the fact that the SUV is clearly not the one they are looking for (Hanson points out that the license plate is different) Ryan stops it anyway after seeing the driver, Cameron (Howard), black. The stop is marked by Ryan harassing Cameron's wife Christine (Newton) over the weak protest of Hanson. The incident is devastating to Cameron and Christine's marriage.

Peter happens to be the brother of police detective Graham Waters (Cheadle) who, as a result of the carjacking, is brought to the attention of the L.A District Attorney Rick Cabot, the victim of the crime along with his wife, Jean (Again, Brendan Fraser and Sandra Bullock). Cabot wants a black detective on the case to avoid accusations of racism and he wants Detective Waters specifically.

Meanwhile Jean at home alone is absolutely freaked out by the incident and has had the locks changed. Unfortunately when her husband sent for a locksmith (Michael Pena) he did not know he was a tattooed inner city Latino, something his wife notes immediately in accusing the man of wanting to change the locks in order to return later and rob her. For his part the locksmith is good hearted family man who has struggled to get out from under this sort of cultural bias all his life.

When the locksmith accepts one more late night job at the grocery store before heading home we get a very tense scene between he and the shop owner Farhad (Shaun Taub) an Iranian immigrant who speaks very little English. What was a simple misunderstanding due to the language barrier very nearly turns violent and leads into yet another scene at the locksmith's home that may be the strongest moment in the film when you yourself see it.

The links between all of the various characters in Crash are tenuous in terms of actual interaction. However in terms of themes, race and racism, they could not be more strongly connected. So bold are the themes and the characters that you can forgive the often forced attempts to connect them physically in the same scene or plot strand.  

Crash is akin to Paul Thomas Anderson's extraordinary 1999 ensemble drama Magnolia. Both films share a reliance on chance and fate and sprawling casts of well known and respected actors. Crash Director Paul Haggis eschews Anderson's esoteric flights of fancy-- there are no frogs in Crash-- but both films pack an emotional punch that will leave the theater with you. Crash is hampered slightly by not having Magnolia's extravagant run time of three plus hours, for at a mere 93 minutes the film has far less time to establish its characters.

Haggis makes up for this by creating dramatic scenarios that are harrowingly tense and emotional. The scenes involving Michael Pena's locksmith and Shaun Toub's Iranian shop keeper are an extraordinary example of Mr. Haggis's ability to craft confrontations that provoke fate without entirely crossing that thin line between dramatic realism and fantasy.

Crash is ostensibly about racism but it goes much deeper than that into an examination of the psyche of a broad expanse of people displaced emotionally by tragedy, by violence, by hatred and more importantly by chance. Chance is the strangest of all, the way people are sometimes thrown together in situations they never could have imagined. Chance breeds fear but it can also breed love. You can meet your end by chance or meet your destiny. Crash is all about chance encounters, people crashing into one another and the way their lives unfold afterwards.

A brilliant announcement of a new talent arriving, Crash brings Paul Haggis from behind the writer's desk and into the director's chair in the way that Paul Schrader broke from his roots of writing for Martin Scorsese to direct his first great film American Gigolo. Like Schrader, Haggis will continue writing for others (he and Eastwood are collaborating once more on the upcoming Flags of Our Fathers), but with Crash, Mr. Haggis shows where his future really lies.

Movie Review: Waist Deep

Waist Deep (2006) 

Directed by Vondie Curis Hall 

Written by ? 

Starring Tyrese, Meagan Good, Larenz Tate, The Game 

Release Date June 23rd, 2006 

Published June 24th, 2006 

The trailers and commercials for Waist Deep give the impression of a gritty, stylish, inner city gangsta pic. Then, you find out it was directed by the same guy, Vondie Curtis Hall, who directed Mariah Carey's Glitter and much of the cool of the trailer slips away. Waist Deep is not nearly as bad as Glitter but it is nearly as vapid and overwrought with an attempt at a relevant, uplifting message that is laughably out of sync.

Brainless gunplay with a melodramatic twist, Waist Deep stars pop star Tyrese Gibson as O2 a recent parollee looking to avoid his third strike and life in prison. He has one other good reason to stay out of trouble, a six year old son named Junior (H. Hunter Hall, the directors son).

Trouble ensues for father and son when they are driving to their home in South Central Los Angeles and get carjacked. Dad is tossed out of the car while Junior is kidnapped with the car. The kidnapping was orchestrated with the aid of a street hustler named Coco (Meagan Goode) who was working on behalf of a gang kingpin named Big Meat (The Game).

Taking Coco hostage, O2 finds that Big Meat is still holding a grudge from a robbery they worked years ago in which O2 walked away with all the loot. Meat was actually the reason O2 was sent to prison the second time, for six years, but apparently that was not enough payback. He wants the money O2 took or he will kill Junior.

Now a few logical questions. Why if O2's cousin, played by the usually terrific Lorenz Tate, works for Big Meat was O2 unaware Meat still had a grudge against him? Why does O2 spend a large portion of the film pretending not to know who Big Meat is if Meat was the reason he went to prison? And why would O2 stay in Los Angeles if he knew that Big Meat was the biggest, baddest gangster in the city? Did he think a guy as crazy as Meat was going to forget a guy who ripped him off? Meat cuts guys hands off with a machete, anyone who knows him should know the guy holds grudges.

These are questions that the movie never answers. Instead, director Vondie Curtis Hall and writer Darrin Scott attempt to distract us with a convoluted series of heists, one more over the top ridiculous than the next, and a rushed, though not entirely unappealing, sex scene.

Along the way Hall and Scott attempt to give Waist Deep a social conscience. In the background of the many scenes of violence are extras who are marching for peace on the streets and more police presence in their neighborhoods. Hall and Scott seem to believe it was wildly ironic and hysterical to have a gang member beaten and kidnapped as a take back the streets rally happens in the foreground. Are they making fun of clueless protesters? No, because Hall and Scott also want the protests to be sincere and the movies anti-violence message is earnest. That is what makes the choices made in presenting these scenes so curious.

What may be most shocking about Waist Deep is the fact that it's soundtrack stinks. This may be some kind of weird stereotype but, generally speaking, urban dramas like Waist Deep have really good hip hop or hardcore rap soundtracks. That is not the case here where Ghostface Killah is the soundtracks big name, but most of the music in the film comes from Kon Artis and Terrence Blanchard and acts as a greek chorus to the action on the screen. That means that the music is as overwrought and dull witted as the film itself.

Tyrese Gibson is really far to good for such weak material. Unfortunately he is making his living on garbage like Waist Deep and his last picture Annapolis, films that fail to take full advantage of his raw intensity and presence. The guy has some real star power, as he showed in his debut film Baby Boy and last years Four Brothers, but it's muted in Waist Deep by a script that is not nearly as smart as he obviously is.

Meagan Goode is one of the most beautiful women in movies today. However, like Gibson, Goode cannot seem to choose the right movies. Breakout stardom remains just out of her grasp in low rent flicks like Deliver Us From Eva and Roll Bounce and Waist Deep is a step backward for this promising talent.

In the end, the blame for the failure of Waist Deep falls on director Vondie Curtis Hall. The actor turned director, best known for his work on TV's Chicago Hope, has an eye that aims for schmaltz and uplift when it should simply begin with story logic and maybe work it's way toward some uplifting message. There is nothing wrong with trying to be socially relevant but a film cannot simply assume relevance it must be earned through good storytelling and compelling characters, Waist Deep has neither.

Cool looking trailers are almost always a letdown and Waist Deep is yet another sad example of a trailer that is far better than the film from which it is culled. Director Vondie Curtis Hall has done little to improve his skills since Glitter. His skills in direction are good enough in terms of keeping his camera trained on the action but he has a tin ear for character development and plotting, two rather important elements in filmmaking.

Movie Review Ray

Ray (2004) 

Directed by Taylor Hackford 

Written by James L. White 

Starring Jamie Foxx, Kerry Washington, Clifton Powell, Harry Lennix, Terrence Howard, Larenz Tate

Release Date October 29th, 2004

Published October 28th, 2004 

There is an odd sort of verisimilitude to this week of reviews as we transition from a horror musical review on Wednesday of Rocky Horror Picture Show into a musical biopic which will remain as our theme headed into Friday when we discuss Bohemian Rhapsody, the new Queen and Freddy Mercury biopic being released nationwide this weekend. It’s rather fascinating to consider that these disparate phenomena, Rocky Horror, Ray Charles and Queen were contemporaries of sorts. Each was a facet of our vast popular culture at the same time, available to the same audience in different ways.

The story told in Ray stops well before the stories for Rocky Horror or Queen even begin but by the time they do arrive, Ray is established as one of the stalwart figures of the music business, a warrior who overcomes disability, racism and a drug habit to become an enduring pop institution. The movie Ray gives us that proverbial ‘warts and all’ look at the life and legend of Ray Charles and while the film is on the shaggy side, Jamie Foxx’s lead performance is one of the great performances of this young century.

Ray tells the story of Ray ‘Charles’ Robinson in a sort of a linear fashion. The film is populated by gauzy flashbacks to Ray’s tragic childhood in Northern Florida in the early 1930’s. In the linear story, we meet Ray as he charms and lies his way onto a bus from Florida to Seattle where he has a gig as a pianist waiting for him. Confusingly, the story flips between Ray’s bus ride to Seattle and the gig that got him the cash to go, playing in a redneck country band.

The structure of Ray at times threatens to derail the movie but Jamie Foxx is so remarkable and the music of Ray Charles so indelible and fascinating that it’s too good even for director Taylor Hackford to screw up. We watch as Ray learns valuable lessons about protecting his money, he insists on being paid in singles to assure that his pay was not shortened. We see him learn how not to be taken advantage of by friends and how they should not underestimate him because of his disability.

Finally, we watch with the most fascination as he creates a legendary catalog of hit music. The studio portions of Ray are magical, filmed with an eye for how historic this moment and time must have been. The cuts to Curtis Armstrong’s Ahmet Ertugen and Richard Schiff’s Jerry Wexler as they witnessed Ray cutting legendary songs in a single take capture the pure creativity that infused the music of Ray Charles. You don’t have to love Ray’s fusion of Jazz, Gospel and Pop to recognize music history in the making, his music crossed all possible boundaries.

If it looks easy it’s because Ray Charles always made it look easy. His blindness didn’t matter, he was one of those rare souls infused with music and an untameable talent for creation. In one of the great moments in the film and in music history, we witness Ray improv what would become one of his all time, bestselling classics, “What’d I Say,” as a way of filling time at the end of a gig that had ended too soon in the eyes of the promoter who threatened not to pay Ray and the band.

Some discount Jamie Foxx’s performance as mere mimicry or a broad impression but I don’t think that is fair. Foxx is stuck with a director in Taylor Hackford who has stuck him with a script that undermines him with a series of pop psych level flashbacks to his childhood that are supposed to infuse him with depth but instead come off as awkward and confused. Foxx overcomes this not by committing to those moments but by busting through those moments to get to the heart of Ray Charles.

Foxx captures both the Ray Charles we know, the gyrating, gesticulating, impish performer and the calculating, paranoid addict side of Ray Charles that the public only glimpsed in headlines. Ray could be cruel when he wanted to be, as demonstrated by his marriage and his relationship with various managers and hangers on, people who thought they were perhaps more than just employees but soon found themselves on the outs.

Foxx is incredible at maintaining our sympathy for Ray even as he does terrible things to himself and to his wife, played by Kerry Washington. It’s not that Ray’s behavior isn’t disappointing, along with director Hackford’s lame attempts to explain his behavior via those pop psych flashbacks, but rather that Foxx gives Ray Charles a vulnerability that not only we find irresistible but we can imagine others found irresistible as well. That’s not an easy trick for any actor to pull off, let alone an actor known at the time for sketch and stand-up comedy.

Foxx’s performance is unquestionably rendered better by comparison to the rest of the movie. Taylor Hackford drags out the story with his stumbling, flashbacks and detours, he spends a good deal of time focusing on the homes Ray Charles bought for his family, admiring the architecture and dwelling on the cost in scenes that are rarely necessary for moving the plot forward.

And then there is the treatment of the women in Ray Charles’ life. Taylor Hackford takes a pair of our most talented African American actresses and gives them little to play beyond cliches of the put-upon wife and the neglected mistress. Kerry Washington and Regina King struggle to bring depth to characters that the director appears to view as roadblocks for Ray to navigate in his redemption arc. Foxx doesn’t see them that way but he has no control over how the edit of the movie robs both actresses of moments where they can grow beyond their function to the story as impediments and aids to Ray’s faults and growth.

Ray is thus a mixed bag as a movie and a music biopic but as a showcase for an actor, it’s a remarkable piece of work. Hackford loves Jamie Foxx, he gives his lead actor every opportunity to exercise his limitless ability to capture the Ray Charles of our imagination and something so very real and true about the man. Foxx bites into the role with fervor and a powerhouse level of star-power and charisma. It took an outsized performance to capture the outsized legend and a remarkable talent to bring him into a real life, sympathetic context beyond the legend.

Jamie Foxx delivers a truly iconic performance as Ray Charles. Here’s hoping Rami Malek is able to do the same for Freddy Mercury whose life had some strange parallels with Ray Charles, though Ray was able to overcome his demons in ways that sadly, Freddy never got the chance to do. If Rami Malek can deliver even a fraction of Foxx’s power, we’re in for something great in Bohemian Rhapsody this week.