Crash
Directed by Paul Haggis
Written by Paul Haggis, Robert Moresco
Starring Matt Dillon, Don Cheadle, Terence Howard, Sandra Bullock, Thandiwe Newton
Release Date May 6th, 2005
Rotten Tomatoes Score 73%
IMDB Score 7.7 out of 10
Budget $6.5 million
Box Office $98.4 million
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 led 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 affluent 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 sees 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 Esposito, 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 carjacking 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), is 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 (Brendan Fraser and Sandra Bullock). Cabot wants a black detective on the case to avoid accusations of racism and he wants Detective Waters specifically to lead the investigation.
Meanwhile Jean is at home and, still shaken by the carjacking, she has had the locks on their home changed. Unfortunately, when her husband sent for a locksmith (Michael Pena) he did not know he was going to be 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 a 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 a grocery store before heading home, we get a very tense scene between him 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 at a mere 93 minutes itself; the film has far less time to establish its characters.
Haggis makes up for the lack of length by creating dramatic scenarios that are harrowingly tense and emotional. The scenes involving Michael Pena's locksmith and Shaun Toub's Iranian shopkeeper 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. Pena’s pained expressions and Taub’s despairing sadness are a powerhouse combination.
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 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.
