Crash

Crash's reputation suffered terribly the moment Jack Nicholson not so enthusiastically announced its victory over Brokeback Mountain. As someone who doesn't love that film, that held no sway in my view. It's now held as one of the worst winners in recent memory. I suppose one can look at it that way given that it is not a very good film. Crash tackles racial tensions in Los Angeles by telling a series of contrived stories. Now I honestly don't mind coincidences being used as a plot device, but the problem is this sets the film up for some sense of importance rather than telling a good story. There are few real characters in the film, and even then that might have a great deal to do with the acting, in those cases. Most characters are reduced to speaking excessively knowing lines of dialogue regarding race or yelling something to increase racial tension. The film offers no real insight, racism is solved by falling down the stairs, the "bad" cop does the right thing, the "good" cop does the wrong thing. The film is a series of events without weight since it is almost impossible to sympathize with the series of thin caricatures we are given that are wrung through a series of improbable circumstances.
1.5/5