Crash
#30 in my 50 movie challenge for the year was Crash, directed by Paul Haggis. In Altman-esque fashion, Crash follows a handful of characters through a few days and several belief-straining coincidences. But the story doesn’t suffer for these coincidences, as it doesn’t from a few bits of stilted dialogue. Instead, I was swept up in characters, their stories, and amazement because I didn’t see a bad performance in the bunch. Don Cheadle was, as usual, amazing, but the surprises were Sandra Bullock and Brendan Fraser, both cast against type. Matt Dillon and Terrence Dashon Howard both chewed up the screen during their scenes. Dillon’s character was sometimes so hateful that it was a brave role to take on, and an even braver one to do so powerfully. Crash was about racism, and it had some ugly moments, but it had compensating beautiful ones, too. What was most interesting was the complexity of the characters. Only one character seemed wholly good; the others were all a compelling, wrenchingly real mix of good and bad. I am still thinking about this film days after I saw it. One of the themes I took away was that we often can’t predict outcomes, so we might as well act in line with our higher ideals rather than out of our baser fears.
July 15th, 2005 at 5:34 am
i thought it was great as well.