Review of Crash (2005) by Eagleno4 — 06 May 2005

Crash is a compelling drama that examines the cultural, ethic and racial conflicts in American society. Most of the characters in this film are angry ... angry at the seemingly lack of control they have over their own lives, a circumstance they blame on everyone who is not racially identical to themselves.

Appropriately, the movie begins with a car operated by an Asian woman crashing into the rear of a car operated by a Latino woman and in which a black man is a passenger (symbolically, a clash of cultures).

As the Asian confronts the Latino, claiming that the other "blaked" too fast, the Negro reflects that modern day society has separated people into areas protected by "glass and steel" so that they no longer are in touch with each other and eventually people become so angry with this situation that they feel compelled to crash into someone just to have contact with another human being.

In a typical scene where the characters are angry at the stereotypes that others categorizes them in, while not realizing they are as equally guilty, there is this exchange between a black man and a Latino woman: He: "I told my mother that I was having sex with a white woman because I knew that would upset her; if I told her it was a Mexican, she would hardly care.

" She: "My father is from Puerto Rico, my mother's from El Salvador, neither of which is Mexico." He: "Well, then, I guess the big mystery is, who gathered up all of those different cultures and taught them all how to park their cars on their front lawns.

" The movie takes the threads of the lives of several people and slowly interweaves them over a two day period to make a tapestry of racial prejudice that forms when you see not the person before you but only the color of his skin.

While the characters literally see each other in black and white, the movie beautifully portrays how there is no such easy division between "good and evil" and that these qualities exists in us all; we all are really just shades of "gray", more alike than any of us would care to admit.

A unique, imaginative, unpredictable movie; the tension of the characters is effectively transmitted to the audience and magnifies your anticipation. Not everything turns out "right" in this film .

.. because that's how life really is. I give this one a 9.25.