Crash Release Date: May 6, 2005 Starring: Nona Gaye, Terrence Dashon Howard, Ryan Philippe, Thandie Newton, Jennifer Esposito, William Fichtner, Ludacris, Tony Danza, Keith David, Brendan Fraser, Matt Dillon, Don Cheadle, Sandra Bullock Directed by: Paul Haggis GLENN KENNY'S REVIEW (posted 5/05/05)
Cowriter-director Paul Haggis (who penned the adaptation of Million Dollar Baby) is deeply concerned with the vicissitudes of race and class in Los Angeles, and to the end of addressing that concern he’s made a film in which a disparate batch of Angelenos, all of whom are connected in what Haggis hopes are unexpected ways, “crash” into one another with varying consequences. It’s kind of like La Ronde, only everybody’s getting rear-ended, carjacked, and shot at instead of having sex. (Okay, there is a sex scene, which is predictably interrupted.) Too much of the time, genuinely tense confrontations only serve as advance men for speechifying, as in a particularly bald scene in which a black detective (Don Cheadle) is given a statistical presentation from a white assistant D.A. (William Fichtner) who has just gotten his attention with the phrase “you black people.” That said, Haggis’s sprawling cast really knows how to sell this stuff—Matt Dillon and Thandie Newton are particularly impressive as a bigoted cop and a confrontational pull-over passenger who are reunited under far different circumstances later on in the 24 hours or so the movie depicts. It’s too bad that the movie induces eyeball-rolling almost as much as it does armrest-clutching.
Related Links: First Look: Crash
Don Cheadle battles sereotypes in Crash.
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