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I have not. But I think I remember someone I know saying that they saw it and that it was really good.
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I have seen both the stupid movie with people who had a car crash fetish and the excellent Crash with its intense scenes of racial disharmony. That was a damn good movie, but it had me cringing during a lot of the scenes in horror and fear for the characters.
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...but I really need to start buying lighthearted DVDs. I like serious films better, but they aren't good for multitasking. Lately I only have time to watch DVDs when they're in the background.
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I found the movie provocative. To tell the truth, I don't think I've ever seen a character like Terrance Howard's character being portrayed as well as he portrayed it. Now, I think that the screenplay should win and Oscar for that and how it handled the Asian immigrants. Actually Ryan Phillipe's character was handled well, also, as was Thandie Newton.
The movie had wonderfully human quality to it. Everyone was just so frail. The only outright caricature was Matt Dillion as the bad cop, and maybe the Persian store owner.
At first, I thought the movie was making too much of the passivity of the characters. They all just seemed too swept up in their circumstances, and while much if life can be seen that way, too swept up in their circumstances isn't anything I want to see a movie about. I see that everyday. The tenor changed in a meaningful way when people started acting of their own agency, for good or ill, the movie became even more meaningful.
As an aside, I think it's strange that as Jennifer Esposito gets older, she is starting to look more and more like Eddie DeFalco. And I need to add to my list of women whose movies I'll see just on the strength of their smile, Bahar Soomekh. ____________
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I loved this movie. I normally hate movies that make me gasp in horror, cry in real pain, and then again in joy. But, this one I liked.
Damnit, I cant remember his name, but I liked the character of the locksmith the best. You kept thinking that SOMETHING had to be popping out of the woodwork at some point because his character was so sweetly normal.
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I agree foundling. He was sweetly normal, on top of being an exemplary father, yet another character who was carried off, pitch perfect.
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My roomate owns it. I've only seen part of it, but based on what I've seen and what almost everyone else I know has said, I'll just quote you guys and say that it's an amazing movie. I think it touched me the most because I, and I assume many (maybe most) of you, can personally relate to racist ideas.
quote: The movie had wonderfully human quality to it. Everyone was just so frail.
See, that was one of my problems with it: none of the people I know and respect are that frail.
I think you two might be working from different definitions of the word "frail". I agreed with Irami's quote because I think everyone in the world is that frail. Some find themselves able to maintain the contrary illusion, sometimes for life, but each and every one of us is a small twist of fate away from utter destruction. It's not pleasant, and we all try our best to avoid thinking about it, but it's the realization of this fact that makes us most human.
Tom, who in the movie did you find to be frail unlike "the people [you] know and respect"? There were some people in the movie I didn't respect, but it wasn't their frailty I didn't respect.
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I've seen the film, and I enjoyed it. It portrayed a very interesting, pretty nuanced message, I think.
There's the racist cop...whose racism is a bit peculiar, since by all appearances there is a friendship between him and another black cop. Who is willing to risk his life to save the life of the woman he violated not...twelve hours before?
There's the "good" cop who wasn't a racist and was uncomfortable with his partner who...turned a self-defense (he thought) killing into murder.
There's the health insurance worker, who may or may not have been a racist but was smugly willing to let the racist cop's racism condemn his father to a slow and painful death.
There was the rich, aggressive wife of the director who wanted her husband to assert his...what, blackness? I don't know...but was nonetheless so utterly disconnected with reality that she couldn't figure out it might not be a good idea for a black man to mouth off to an obviously racist white cop.
There was the hispanic locksmith who despite being subjected to quite an earful of hateful invective about how he's a gangbanger and would sell his employers out to gangsters...doesn't, just goes home to his daughter.
Personally-and admittedly this is showing some of my own pre-existing bias here-I think one of the messages of the film was that there are more important things about a person than what their racial politics are.
It's not that racial politics aren't important, it's just that they're not the only thing.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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I didn't like Crash. I thought it was a miserable movie about miserable people.
Of course, by almost every standard, it is a movie of good "quality". It has wonderful acting, casting, scriptwriting, direction, etc. It is still, however, miserable.
There are a total of maybe six characters that had any redeeming value in the movie - the locksmith and his family, the shopowner's daughter and wife, and the maid. I have nothing very positive to say about anyone else.
And it really seemed like the nice people, in the long run, that got the short end of the stick. [[[SPOILER WARNING]]] The shopowner's family had to deal with the break-in, the maid had to deal with living with Sandra Bullock every day, and the locksmith almost lost his daughter. So, basically, the world is populated by jerks and those who suffer at the hands of jerks.
quote:I thought it was a miserable movie about miserable people.
Ryan Phillippe, Terrance Howard, and Thandie Newton's characters were all handled well. *spoilers*
The idol of the saint could have easily been a gun. Phillippe shot. What was he supposed to do?
Terrance Howard's decision to let the cop molest his wife and later let his boss reghettoize his actor's lines were all understandable. It was the price he was paying for his success. I doubt he could have afforded to attract and retain Newton as his wife to begin with if he had spent his energy defending all things black, and when he did start "fighting back," he quickly found himself seconds away from death on multiple occasions, it's only an accident that he survived the film. Actually, if I were to rewrite anything, he would have been shot.
Newton's character was understandable because part of the gig of dating a guy is that the guy is supposed to protect you from those circumstances. Its a paradox. Its awful. And there are deep implications for black men and women in the justification of her behavior, but I have a hard time blaming her for being upset, just as I have a hard time blaming him for playing Steppin' Fetchit.
Sandra Bullock's character was awful. As was Brendan Fraser's. They both played people I know exist, and I don't want any part of them. The police chief's character was just an older, angrier version of Terrance Howard. I'd be shocked if he could retain a wife and family and didn't have any destructive habits. He was so full of hate. Don Cheadle carried his mother and his brother like an albatross around his neck. He couldn't get rid of his responsibity to them, and through them to all black American youth, when all he really wanted to do was do his job, smoke, and have sex with Jennifer Esposito. Those are simple goals, two out of three of them are even laudable, but circumstances outside of his control put all of this other pressure on him, which interfered with his job, his sleeping with Jennifer Esposito, and his smoking.
The characters are tragic, not because of a lack of moral fortitude, but because they were placed in tragic situations.
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It's Terrence Howard, not Terrence Stamp. Terrence Howard has been nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for Hustle and Flow. Terrence Stamp was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar in 1962 for Billy Budd and starred in the highly overrated The Limey.
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I haven't seen any of the movies Terrence Howard has been in, I've only seen him on talk shows and the like. I think he's adorable. Posts: 6415 | Registered: Jul 2000
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Crash is one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. I can't remember another movie that caused such a strong emotional and mental reaction for me.
I really loved and responded to the fact that the majority of the focus characters weren't great people. I'm sick of seeing unrealistic and perfect characters in movies. I think it sends the wrong message to a society when our mainstream "art" depicts only superficial situations and reaction. Crash offers viewers a great chance to escape the illusion that we're all okay, that everything is peachy keen. Sometimes I get sick of fiction being so detached from reality. The flaws of each of Crash's characters made it possible for me to identify with them.
The ending with Philipe's character really affected me. For days I just couldn't get him out of my head. I saw someone like myself who was idealistic and yet there was still a nasty knot deep down inside. I came out of Crash with the feeling that I had some buried opinions and irrational fears of my own that I needed to work out. That cop's story touched just alittle to close to home but I'm glad I experienced it.
I appreciate that this movie has been made. In my family and in my hometown racism has always been there on the borders of our lives. This movie provided several great opportunities for my mother and myself to sit down and talk (some somewhat explosive reactions on both sides.) She's even begun recommending it to anyone who needs a wake-up call of their own.
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quote:Personally-and admittedly this is showing some of my own pre-existing bias here-I think one of the messages of the film was that there are more important things about a person than what their racial politics are.
It's not that racial politics aren't important, it's just that they're not the only thing.
What I liked about the film was that the film didn't go out of its way to break stereotypes, either. For example, the two black men stiffed a waitress and car jacked an uppity white couple's nice car. That's right out of a stereotype. I don't think that the movie's message was that stereotyping is bad, rather, it's that negotiating life in quasi-integrated, car friendly, Los Angeles tricky business.
I don't think that the characters were morally flawed. Well, a few of them were, mostly, I think that they were in the grips of forces more powerful than they were. What was the locksmith supposed to do different? What was Phillipe supposed to do differently? What was Howard supposed to do differently? Again, if I write the script, his can would have ended in a body bag, and maybe Newton ends up with Tony Danza.
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quote: Crash is an uncomfortable film to sit through because the characters either speak, represent, or point out ugly things. Everybody is sad and grievance is connected to racial prejudice, insensitiveity or self-centered ignorance, and the film is completely and utterly in your face about those elements that it soon becomes clear that this may be a reflection of mass psychology rather than reality. Ultimately, the film argues, everybody is a victim, and everybody is an aggressor, and that this is arrangement--though the social disconnect that comes with it is horribly depressing--is for the most part inevitable. In the closing shots of the film, as another Crash occurs, the tone is humorous. "It's the sense of touch--we miss it so much that we Crash to each other just to feel something" says Don Cheadle's detective. But by the end, formal miscalculation and a fair amount of cheese sort of taint any sense of touch the film may have temporarily accorded us.
For by refusing to deal with any of its threads at length and allowing us to merely glimpse the problem, "Crash" becomes merely a crash course in racial dynamics as Haggis sees it.. Everybody has a problem and the question of race is almost always on their mind. As the film opens, two women who get into a little car accident, one Hispanic and the other Asian, hurl racial insults at each other as soon as they step out of the car. This is Spike Lee anger but without the insight into progress. When Monte in The 25th Hour condemned and cursed out his fellow new yorkers in harsh racial terms there was the reminder that he was one of them and had the right to speak of them this way, but the characters in Crash declare their racist remarks in that embarrassing, in your face manner that modern social ettiquite declares to be evil. Even full bloodied racists don't speak that way, and the truth is that people are more connected than Crash would have you believe, and when I say connected I don't mean in the 'crisscrossing paths' theme the film ineffectually tries to pull off. I mean it in the sense that people in the real world--of different races--get along or hide their hatreds better than Haggis would have you believe. There's a young Hispanic man in the film who functions solely to act as the victim of Prejudice--from a white woman and an Iranian man. Forget that the woman in question--given her high class pretensions--wouldn't speak that away about a minority in the presence of other people or that the Iranian's anger and racism are inexplicable and contrived. Instead, what you notice is that every moment the Hispanic dude is on the screen the film becomes a pure exercise in cheese and sermonizing.
Tough and uncomfortable questions are posed but, in trying to capture them from every perspective, the film undoes them. It is short but feels stuffed. Just as we're getting the hang of one character we're cut to another to the effect that all we get is an impression of the these people but never full understanding. It's these impressions Haggis is concerned with, the one note characters and the sudden transformations. The film's best and most powerful storyline (which could have served as the basis for a better film)--that involving the sexually molesting/racist cop and the two affluent black couple--is ruined by the cliched Connected Fate Amongst Strangers theme Haggis insists on. The film has been compared to Magnolia because of this aspect, but whatever its shortcomings, Magnolia was gloriously and awesomely musical and operatic in its flow. Crash in comparison feels clunky. Rarely did I develop any strong attachment to one plot thread or rarely did I long to return to another because there's no respectable sense of flow and rhythm to the scenes. In retrospect more scenes between Matt Dillon'smonster cop and Ryan Phillippe's hero would've been nice--in retrospect a closer examination of the racial politics black cops play would've been welcome, or perhaps a look into how the idea prefers to portray blacks--but all these elements are raised but grace by, never touching us, and ultimately all Haggis offers is ham-fisted irony. Suddenly the monster cop becomes a hero through a courageous act halfway through the film and the cop we thought a hero becomes a monster through a terrible act. A better one: Ludacris saving Thai slaves while affectionately referring to them as "chinamen." I walked out thinking the title was too apt
Also, there's a considerable backlash against the film right now for being so heavy handed about racism. It has good intentions but it leaves one with the feeling that a genuine subtle racist can see it and come out feeling good that he or she isn't as horrible as some of those characters. It panders to our desire to feel morally superior. In doing this it doesn't make us question our own prejudices but in fact almost justifies them, because, hey, we're all victims! Even the rapist-super-racist cop! Posts: 722 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Xavier and I just got back from seeing Crash and we both loved it. It deserved its Oscar nomination.
Rakeesh, I disagree with a lot of your analysis though.
quote:There's the racist cop...whose racism is a bit peculiar, since by all appearances there is a friendship between him and another black cop.
There was no friendship between these two cops. They had an understanding. The black cop doesn't rat on the racist one and in return he continues to move up the chain of command. If he were to make waves about the racism he understands that his job would in danger.
quote:There's the health insurance worker, who may or may not have been a racist but was smugly willing to let the racist cop's racism condemn his father to a slow and painful death.
The state funded medical converage programs are awful. No question. It is also very sad that caseworker's have their hands tied most of the time. I don't believe that woman had the authority to "wave her magic pen around" and get some results. She may have been happy about that but it needs to be said that these workers are unable to do things like allowing a person to see another doctor.
quote:There was the rich, aggressive wife of the director who wanted her husband to assert his...what, blackness? I don't know...but was nonetheless so utterly disconnected with reality that she couldn't figure out it might not be a good idea for a black man to mouth off to an obviously racist white cop.
All she wanted from her husband was for him to make the cops stop assalting her. She wanted him to do what was right-stop that from happening-RIGHT NOW! Forget about the consequences-SAVE ME!
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I thought it was a very good movie, the best I've seen in a long time. Though it wasn't a comfortable movie to watch.
Probably the part that was most uncomfortable was the man watching his wife get molested, and not being able to do anything about it.
His wife's reaction was most certainly understandable, but so was the husband's. What could he have done? His only options were to stand there and let it happen or get arrested for assaulting a police officer (and probably be beaten severely for it, maybe even shot). Besides considerable bodily harm, he could have gotten serious jailtime if he had attempted to intervene.
Did anyone else pick up on the romantic relationship between Brendan Fraser's DA character and his black coworker/underling? There were references to his wife being jealous in the beginning, and then there was the look on Brendan Fraser's face when he told his wife he loved her in front of the black woman.
It was pretty subtle, and it made me wonder if there was more filmed or scripted dealing with those two that was cut.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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quote:There was no friendship between these two cops. They had an understanding. The black cop doesn't rat on the racist one and in return he continues to move up the chain of command. If he were to make waves about the racism he understands that his job would in danger.
I should've been more specific. I meant the black cop that he met with in the parking lot and decided to ride with, not the captain? Lietenant? It's been awhile since I've seen it, though, and I've only seen it once-I may've misremembered something.
quote: I don't believe that woman had the authority to "wave her magic pen around" and get some results. She may have been happy about that but it needs to be said that these workers are unable to do things like allowing a person to see another doctor.
Doesn't the healt-care worker-manager say something like, "If you'd come in with that attitude, things would be different right now," when the racist cop bears his troubles to her?
I remember vividly the impression I got at the time that she was telling him, "I'd help out you and your old man if you hadn't been such a racist prick over the phone and in person." Possibly she was bluffing in that she couldn't do anything either way, but I really think that she intended to convey that message.
quote:All she wanted from her husband was for him to make the cops stop assalting her. She wanted him to do what was right-stop that from happening-RIGHT NOW! Forget about the consequences-SAVE ME!
I should've been more specific here as well. I was referring only partially to the molesting scene, and more to their later arguments about it. I got the impression that this argument-her wanting to assert more blackness-was one that'd been had before, but it was much more emotional and heated this time, due to the police molestation. I totally understand her reaction to the molestation and her outrage, even though I remain convinced it was stupid and ill-conceieved. But people get like that when things get intense.
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Xavier,
I totally agree about the husband and wife's reaction. I think that was pretty spot-on. I didn't pick up on the possible involvement with the black subordinate, except to note, "Wow, they're together an awful lot," but there could well have been something there.
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Anything he would've done (besides what he did-nothing) would probably have stopped the cop from molesting her. I felt he should've done something to stop it. She will be traumatized for the rest of her life. I'm betting the relationship would've ended over it (if we were able to see their future).
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I think you're crediting an overtly racist cop with a little too much restraint, really. If he was willing to feel her up just because she got a little lippy (and honestly, I don't even remember if she did get a bit sarcastic before he did anything, I need to re-watch the movie), I think it's quite reasonable to assume that he would've escalated things if the husband had tried to stop his fun.
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quote:I should've been more specific. I meant the black cop that he met with in the parking lot and decided to ride with
That man was hispanic/latino.
quote:Anything he would've done (besides what he did-nothing) would probably have stopped the cop from molesting her. I felt he should've done something to stop it.
Like what, exactly? Asking him to stop? Do you think that would have worked?
Anything else would have involved assaulting a police officer, which I believe is a felony. Its also a justification to beat a suspect into submission. It can even be used as a justification for using deadly force against a suspect.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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Ahhh, OK. One of the details I've forgotten. Unless I see a movie repeatedly or have maybe read a book about it or something, sometimes I even have trouble remembering their names. I couldn't tell you the character name of a single actor or actress in that film, actually.
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quote:Asking him to stop? Do you think that would have worked?
Yes; Probably not. What should he have done? He should've attempted to use physical force. Risk a felony charge? Yes. He will always regret not helping her, especially when she leaves him and needs therapy for the rest of her life and is unable to carry on future relationships because she can't trust her significant other. Who cares if he's arrested? He looked like a well to do guy. I imagine he would've gotten every hotshot lawyer in the country to volunteer to represent his case. A few nights in jail and a record vs. the consequences of doing nothing. I know what I'd choose.
That cop needed to be taken off of the street for what he did. I have a feeling that his partner (Ryan Phillipe) would've made a good witness for them.
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Somehow I doubt it...Ryan Phillipe is a man who is willing to take a stand...kind of, not risking his career, though...on a moral issue, but when it comes to action...he torches the car and walks away.
Arresting and a beating was not the only thing that could've happened to him. Black men have been known to get shot for picking up their wallets. For actually assaulting a racist white police officer?
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I'm giving Ryan's character the benefit of the doubt for his actions during the other scene with the same man later in the movie. I think he could be convinced to do the right thing. He already disliked the racist cop.
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quote: I just don't like him very much at all, I guess. Understand him? Sure.
Yeah, I didn't like most of the characters in the movie. Perhaps the Hispanic guy. He didn't do anything unethical. Everyone was else made me sick.
Did any one catch Marina Sirtis (Troi from Star Trek:TNG) as the shop owner's wife? Just a cameo, really.
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I noticed that, too-I thought my mother was crazy when she said it, because the daughter was on screen at the time, heh.
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