"CRASH": BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

Sunday night at the 78th Academy Awards extravaganza, the Kodak Theatre audience of stars, filmmakers of all trades, their families, and everyone else, erupted in shouts of disbelief, amazement, and glee when Jack Nicholson announced that "Crash" won the Oscar for Best Picture.

Writer/director Paul Haggis’s independent film came out last fall and didn’t stay in theatres very long. Now, because of the spectacular, surprising win over "Brokeback Mountain," it is being re-released this Friday, March 10th. If you have not seen it on the big screen, now’s your chance. Paul Haggis also won for Best Original Screenplay and the film garnered an award for film editing, as well.

Last August, I had reviewed the film for another venue. The following is an adaptation of that review.

A film with a title like "Crash," set in Los Angeles, could lead you to expect freeway wrecks. Consider instead the crash of class, culture, and race based on accepted stereotypes, which are not only destructive but founded in truth, served up with large helpings of fear and paranoia. "Crash" blows holes in your expectations of how each character will react based on what you’ve witnessed in early scenes and on whatever prejudices you yourself bring to the film. And be prepared. Your high-minded, well-intentioned PC ideals will be shattered. Guaranteed.

Haggis (who also scripted "Million Dollar Baby") successfully juggles a complex story that takes place in two days in a highly charged atmosphere of urban alienation, misperception, and intolerance. He did not rely on CGI green-screen shots or hokey plots to give us a roller coaster ride of twists and surprises that keep us riveted in our seats and white-knuckled to the arm rest. Rather, he shows us low-life/high-life grit involving bad cop/good cop, played by Matt Dillon and Ryan Phillippe; law enforcement - - Don Cheadle as a police investigator with Jennifer Esposito, his partner and lover. Political manipulation is thrown into the mix with Brendan Fraser as a high-powered, ambitious DA. Sandra Bullock plays Fraser’s alienated wife. At a low point in her pampered life, she confesses to her middle age Mexican maid, whom she verbally abuses, that she, the maid, is the only friend she’s got.

Tensions start high and hover in the stratosphere till the very end. Racial slurs fly and don’t let up. Right off, Cheadle and Esposito are rear-ended by an Asian woman. Esposito makes fun of her accent: " ‘Blake too fast’? Speak English!" One of the best scenes features Terrence Howard and Thandie Newton as a beautiful, affluent Black couple. Howard is a successful, respected TV director, who must bend to his White producer’s demands (a mature Tony Danza in a brief appearance). Driving home from a cocktail party one night, the couple is stopped by cops Dillon and Phillippe. Newton is sexually humiliated, literally, at the hands of bad cop Dillon while Howard stands by, helplessly impotent. Later, Phillippe defuses a tense police confrontation, again with Howard, and a car-jacker, played by Chris "Ludicris" Bridges. Another volatile scene involves a confused, angry Iranian storeowner threatening at gunpoint a benign Latino locksmith who is clutching his 5-year-old daughter. Watching it, you catch your breath, dreading its outcome.

Haggis did stage one horrific, fiery crash. Yet it is not gratuitous but significantly profound as it allows the characters played by Dillon and Newton, in a life-threatening situation, to get beyond racial stereotypes and relate as human beings. "Crash" is a moving work about people living in a freeway culture in Big City, USA, unavoidably or accidentally thrown together - - people who sell-out to save themselves or make moral compromises to save a family member. The good cop (Phillippe) impulsively engages in an evil act for which not only he will suffer, but also the family he destroys. Evil flips to good as when the perceived bad guy (Ludicris) doesn’t sell out a group of smuggled Cambodians to the highest bidder.

In an interview about the film, Thandie Newton has said that racism is just a tool to deal with frustration and pain, in denial about the way we feel and desperate to control the environment. She went on to say that the film lets you see a character’s motivation: behind the aggressive cop is a person in pain. Motivation, she said, "is much more valuable than stereotype and racism, is just one piece to the whole puzzle that the film offers."

Some critics have said that "Crash" is "hackneyed" and that it would have had more relevance after the Rodney King riots. They are wrong. You leave the theatre feeling as though you haven’t simply seen a film, but have taken, unwittingly, a good look into your own soul. Detractors may be afraid of what the film made them face within themselves. Haggis has crafted an intelligent piece of work. He was unafraid to put a human face on social injustice, racism, intolerance, bigotry, and prejudice. These issues are always with us and cannot be
ignored. "Crash" is a film that merits a second, or even a third, look. Well, thanks to the Oscar win, we’re getting it.