Week 11 - Crash

For this weeks blog task a review of the movie 'Crash' had to be published. The movie, which won 3 Oscars, was critically acclaimed by many movie critics, but on the contrary there were also some negative reviews, with people believing the movie to be just another film about the things wrong with certain areas of the USA, in this case L.A.
The movie focuses around supposed everyday occurences in Los Angeles, and how people find their lives intersecting with one another and how events that unfold affect each individual's life in unexpected ways.
The film has an obvious task in addressing the situation regarding racism in the United States. This is shown by not only the two black actors and their roles in the film, as gangsters, but also by how the ways of American society has warped one cop's views of what is right and wrong. The movie works well in showing how people go from one extreme to another in their everyday lives. Evidence of this is shown through many characters. The issue of trust in one addressed in every storyline in the movie. Perhaps the most prominent ones are that of the Senator's wife, played by Sandra Bullock, where after one event such as a car-jacking at gunpoint, her trust in all people who are not white and American is strained severely, shown through her mistrust of the Latino man who fixes her house door. The same man is shown mistrust due to race again, albeit with previous circumstances affecting the shop owner's judgement, but this issue is looked at closely throughout the whole movie, and seems to present the notions that many people may believe, but are too afraid to say themselves.
It is easy to see where the film attracts criticism, with overemphasis at times on certain issues, such as race, and how it can be seen to be 'just another PC movie'. However, where this movie shines is through its ability to present very relevant issues through not necessarily extreme views, but views that need to be expressed in order for people to take notice that these things do actually happen today.

Ed

http://www.nycfilmcritic.com/display_film.php?id=161

http://www.filmfocus.co.uk/review.asp?ReviewID=314