Crash -- 2004 -- R

When the movie opened, I was a little concerned. The racial overtones were screaming the theme of the film loud and clear and I wasn't sure how a movie about racism would turn out. Fortunately, after we established the racial element, the movie quickly focused on the character element and became the great film it has been acknowledged as.

It is difficult to sum up this film with a firm plot, but it is more about the struggles of a huge cast of characters, none of which is any more major than the other. In a mere two hours, the filmmakers manage to fill out the personalities of at least a dozen different people to the point that we understand their situation and care about their resolutions and even get a little tense at a few key moments -- moments that would have easily lost their impact if even a single scene were deleted.

You have a wide range of different people from the DA who is carjacked by some black hoods to a black couple pulled over by a pair of cops, one of which just had a horrible experience with a black supervisor at an insurance company. You have a hispanic locksmith with a family who has a run-in with the arabic (persian, not iraqi) owner of a shop that was broken in to. The DA's wife who doesn't want to be a racist, but is proven she should be everytime and takes out her frustrations on the hispanic locksmith that she assumes too much about. Or the white TV producer who felt the black actor was talking "too white" for his part. Yes, black vs. white is a big part, but it tackles the boundaries of many, many cultures and misinterpretations that abound as a result of not accepting cultural differences and not allowing people to be who they are.

Throughout the incredible narrative, nothing is superfluous, no matter how much it seems to be earlier. We move through it waiting for something elseto happen to these people and it contiunually allows life to be the drama that it really instead of creating drama in a situation that has enough of its own. It's loaded with a slew of touching moments, tense scenes, and even one that will leave you in the same state as the characters in the scene because it is so well done.

 Beyond just a film of stories and characters, this one also went a step further. It showed the consequences of a bigoted mind. Not just someone who is doing something on purpose to be mean, but someone who believes what they are doing is the right thing, but showing even a hint of racial bigotry can change everything. It also shows the consequences of living in a world laced so heavily with a racial elements, particularly the political side of such a situation and how situations can be twisted one way or the other just to avoid the implication of racism, even if the seemly racist answer is actually the truth. One of the more interesting ones was someone who believed they were above the common attitude only to find himself stereotyping by mistake when the situation arose. This element was more powerful than the plot and characters because it forces the viewer to go beyond just watching a film, but to the next step of relating to it.

To risk a real opinion: my favorite family was the hispanic locksmith, but I have a thing for the father-daughter relationship. Some beautiful moments between them and a scene that could not have been any better later.

Crash is one of those rare movies that you have to open up to to fully enjoy and once I allowed myself to do so, I found a movie that deserves to rank among the best of the best.