Review of Crash (2005) by Tomc. — 13 Aug 2005

What an overblown, inarticulate, clumsy and depressing film! The strokes are so broad, and most of the set-ups so obvious that even the bits that do work and are affecting are blown out of the water ten seconds later by something so eye-rollingly hideous - a girl is told that she's got her father's invisible shield to protect her against bullets.

.. What happens next? Duh. Some of the stories are incredibly slight and trivial - Sandra Bullock has three conversations and that's her narrative. Other ones are insanely implausible - a TV director whose had two difficult experiences in a day after (presumably) a life of dealing with racial tensions, suddenly goes loopy for no obvious reason.

Worst of all is the cynicism here - and this the bit where I really agree with one of the other reviewers here - the whole film operates on the assumption that people aren't good or bad, they're just trying to get through difficult circumstances - and it also operates under the assumption that if depressing and cynical films are 'artful' then REALLY depressing and cynical films must be Leonardo da Vincis.

So everyone is corrupt or evil in one way or another - only one character is honourable all the way through, the rest are universally just different shades of self-involved wankery. You come out of the cinema not uplifted by people's struggles or wiser in the race wars, but sickened by your fellow man, disgusted by our whole revolting species.

This isn't a tragedy, it's a self-indulgent, wallowing, decadent film that reveals the bankrupcy of the film-maker's spirit - a man who can afford the luxury of an absolute loss of faith and wants to take the whole world down with him.

Not very good. I'd go as far as to say that in its representation of humans as universally corrupt, it's very nearly evil.