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Crash
(2004)
Dir. Paul Haggis
I suppose Crash is an appropriate title for a movie whose plot revolves around several violent accidents, but the plot is so frigging dependent on absurd levels of coincidence that, well, Coincidence might have been a more apt moniker. This tale of the thickly intertwining lives of a group of Angelenos is the directorial debut of Paul Haggis, the screenwriter behind Million Dollar Baby, who also contributed pen and ink to Diff’rent Strokes, The Love Boat, The Facts of Life and One Day at a Time. A formidable career in television to be sure, but what’s ironic about it in the context of Crash is that the movie relies--more so than on anything else--on the same groaning, “no fucking way” happenstance that most sitcoms base at least half their episodes on. For instance, if Tootie allows a friend who thinks she might be pregnant to take a pregnancy test in the boarding school’s bathroom, her friend is inevitably going to leave it in the trash. Mrs. Garrett is going to find it and think that one of the girls--though naturally not Natalie--is pregnant. Of course she can’t come out and ask, so she’ll hint around the subject. Due to whatever subplot is going on, she’s think it’s Jo*, whose answers were a little fishy--but only because she thought Mrs. Garrett was asking her about motorcycle maintenance! After enough scrambling, Tootie’s friend will be forced to come clean and not only will it prove to Mrs. Garrett what a fine gaggle of girls she’s got, but the pregnant friend will have mended a fractured relationship with her alcoholic father--who happens to be Jo‘s teacher at the diesel college.
Crash starts strong, with a police detective played by Don Cheadle talking to his partner about the isolating tendencies of Los Angeles. He says that in most cities you walk everywhere and are constantly brushing up against strangers, but in LA, people move around in boxes made of metal and glass and have not real contact. Because of this, people subconsciously “crash” into one another. The oddly meditative tone quickly devolves into a stew of chance encounters, reencounters and re-reencounters that proves utterly ridiculous. But it’s not just this astronomical level of chance that makes the movie suspect--and this is to say nothing of the nauseatingly redemptive round-up that makes up the third act. Nearly every character in the movie is incapable of uttering more than one sentence without diving headlong into derogatory racial diatribe. Of just about everyone in the movie--except for the deceptively surly-looking Mexican locksmith (Haggis: “Gothcha!”)--you eventually are compelled to ask yourself, “who the fuck talks like this all the time? Are Americans really this racist.”
Up until hurricane Katrina, I guess the answer would have been “shucks no! we‘re buddies” But in light of the sickening, stone-cold bigotry afforded the citizens of New Orleans, I’m not so sure.
Crash, is an overrated, melodramatic fluke fest whose power and scope lies closer to Lawrence Kasdan’s Grand Canyon than anything of real societal merit.
*Character’s full name: Joanna Marie Polniaczek Bonner. WTF? Was that you Haggis? You silly bastard.
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