What was crash the movie about

Their negative impulses may be instinctive, their positive impulses may be dangerous, and who knows what the other person is thinking? The result is a movie of intense fascination; we understand quickly enough who the characters are and what their lives are like, but we have no idea how they will behave, because so much depends on accident.

Most movies enact rituals; we know the form and watch for variations. Because we care about the characters, the movie is uncanny in its ability to rope us in and get us involved. It connects stories based on coincidence, serendipity, and luck, as the lives of the characters crash against one another other like pinballs.

The movie presumes that most people feel prejudice and resentment against members of other groups, and observes the consequences of those feelings.

One thing that happens, again and again, is that peoples' assumptions prevent them from seeing the actual person standing before them. Both the Iranian and the white wife of the district attorney Sandra Bullock believe a Mexican-American locksmith Michael Pena is a gang member and a crook, but he is a family man.

A black cop Don Cheadle is having an affair with his Latina partner Jennifer Esposito , but never gets it straight which country she's from. A cop Matt Dillon thinks a light-skinned black woman Thandie Newton is white. When a white producer tells a black TV director Terrence Dashon Howard that a black character "doesn't sound black enough," it never occurs to him that the director doesn't "sound black," either.

For that matter, neither do two young black men Larenz Tate and Ludacris , who dress and act like college students, but have a surprise for us. You see how it goes. Along the way, these people say exactly what they are thinking, without the filters of political correctness.

The district attorney's wife is so frightened by a street encounter that she has the locks changed, then assumes the locksmith will be back with his "homies" to attack them.

The white cop can't get medical care for his dying father, and accuses a black woman at his HMO with taking advantage of preferential racial treatment. The Iranian can't understand what the locksmith is trying to tell him, freaks out, and buys a gun to protect himself. The gun dealer and the Iranian get into a shouting match. I make this sound almost like episodic TV, but Haggis writes with such directness and such a good ear for everyday speech that the characters seem real and plausible after only a few words.

His cast is uniformly strong; the actors sidestep cliches and make their characters particular. For me, the strongest performance is by Matt Dillon, as the racist cop in anguish over his father. He makes an unnecessary traffic stop when he thinks he sees the black TV director and his light-skinned wife doing something they really shouldn't be doing at the same time they're driving.

True enough, but he wouldn't have stopped a black couple or a white couple. So it's up to you to watch or rewatch it and decide if it deserves its place at the bottom of every critic's list. We mean, really, not every movie comes with this kind of baggage. Treat yourself and see what all the fuss is about. The easy answer is that you need to think for yourself and not let critics' opinions keep you from watching the movie if you've never seen it.

But if we left it that simple, we'd be doing what many people say Crash does: we'd be oversimplifying a complex issue. So our other answer to why you should care is a bit more complicated. First, once you've seen Crash, you have to decide who you agree with, and why. Do you agree with the writer for the Daily Kos who argued that those who loved the movie "congratulated themselves on 'learning' something that ought to have been perfectly […] obvious"?

Or do you stand by Roger Ebert, who "believe[s] that occasionally a film comes along that can have an influence for the better, and maybe even change us a little"?

Once you've decided your personal thoughts on the film, it's time to think about the movie's relevance. Crash is a film often described as simplistic , but taking all of these tumultuous events into consideration, the movie has one heck of a backstory.

Even if people aren't still talking about Crash today, other than to say they hate it, we want you to ask yourself if Crash accomplished anything back in And if it did, is its contribution to our culture still worth caring about?

Now, these questions are more complicated than that questions Crash even attempts to tackle. That's why its critics hate it so much: they think it oversimplifies race, which is an insanely complicated issue. It's twisted and tangled, like the aftermath of a car crash. But you can't go back in time. The Crash happened, and we all move on. Perhaps we should care about Crash as a starting point for a race discussion, but not the answer? These remain huge questions that we need to address.

What do you think? It barely beat out a movie about a bunch of clowns. Although, in a way, "movie about a bunch of clowns" could also describe Crash … Source.

In , the Hollywood Reporter polled hundreds of Academy members, asking that if they could have a do-over, would they overturn certain decisions made in Oscar past. For Crash, the answer is yes.

Those polled would take a mulligan to name Brokeback Mountain best picture over Crash. Full Tilt Ebert describes Crash as a movie in which characters collide "like pinballs," making us wish there was a Crash pinball machine with permanent multiball. Eventually, all heck breaks loose. Shaniqua Johnson denies Officer Ryan's dad's insurance claim.

Officer Ryan saves Christine from a burning car, and she is not happy that it's the man who sexually assaulted her who's saving her life. Cameron taunts cops and almost gets shot, forcing Officer Murphy to intervene.

In a misunderstanding, Officer Murphy shoots Peter and hides the body. Peter turns out to be Detective Waters' brother, and Waters is sad about that. Waters agrees to send a racist cop to jail to get a promotion for himself. Farhad fires his gun at Ruiz, but it turns out his daughter puts blanks in it. And Jean Cabot falls down, like, two steps and hurts her ankle. Despite having literally the smallest problem of everyone, she whines the most. And that's about it.

Did anyone learn any lessons? Will these people keep crashing into each other? How expensive are everyone's insurance premiums going to be after this?