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Matt Dillon and Thandie Newton deal with racism in tedious best picture disaster Crash |
Director: Paul Haggis
Cast: Sanda Bullock (Jean Cabot), Don Cheadle (Detective
Graham Walters), Matt Dillon (Sgt John Ryan), Jennifer Esposito (Ria), Brendan
Fraser (DA Rick Cabot), Terrence Howard (Cameron Thayer), Ludacris (Anthony), Thandie
Newton (Christine Thayer), Michael Peña (Daniel Ruiz), Ryan Phillippe (Officer
Tom Hansen), Larenz Tate (Peter), Shaun Toub (Farhad), Bahar Soomekh (Dorri),
William Fichtner (Flanagan), Keith David (Lt Dixon), Bruce Kirby (‘Pop’ Ryan), Beverly
Todd (Mrs Waters)

The film follows a kaleidoscope of events in Los Angeles, each
of which revolves around clashes between different races, with stories that are
shown to interlink. So we have an ambitious DA (a miscast Brendan Fraser) and
his wife (a pretty good Sandra Bullock) carjacked by two gangbangers (Ludacris
and Larenz Tate). A TV director (Terrence Howard) and his wife (Thandie Newton)
are pulled over then assaulted by a bigoted cop (Matt Dillon), despite the
fears of his nervous liberal partner (Ryan Phillippe). A locksmith (Michael
Peña) deals with racial suspicions from the DA’s wife, and from a Persian shop
owner (Shaun Toub), who is himself the victim of racial abuse. A cop (Don
Cheadle) and his partner (Jennifer Esposito) investigate two undercover cops
who shot each other, monitored by the DA. And so it goes on.
Crash could be
pretty much relabelled Racism Actually.
In fact, it shares a lot of traits with Richard Curtis’ loosely assembled
series of shaggy dog stories, feeling as they do like off-cuts and half
assembled scraps of ideas from Haggis’ writing desk. But what he ends up
wheeling out here is a manipulative, cliché-filled pile of earnest claptrap, in
which basically a series of unpleasant characters behave unpleasantly towards
each other. You can see why the ageing academy might have warmed to it – it’s a
film that looks at racism, by exploring how, gosh darn it don’t you know
“everybody is a little bit racist” sometimes.
On top of that, Haggis’ film relies overwhelmingly on coincidence
and the tired “we are all linked together” clichés. It wants to try and make
big statements about the prejudices and victimisation that we all suffer in our
different ways – but it delivers them in such a clumsy and manipulative way your
nose ends bruised by the number of points hit on it. For starters, do people
really throw around racial slurs as readily and immediately as the characters
in this film do? Surely the real danger of racism is not the people who shout
racist nicknames and get angry immediately – isn’t the real danger of racism its
incipient nature, the quiet whispers behind closed doors or the barriers gently
but firmly put in the way?
This film turns racism into something loud, obvious and
crass. And then it produces a film that does the same thing. The script is full
of scenes which never feel real, – every conversation in the piece turns into a
clumsy series of “we all hold prejudiced views” or “I’ve got more depths than
you think” statements that always feel fake. Not once do the characters sound
like real people. It’s the sort of clumsy, crappy, thuddingly worthy
film-making that ostentatiously believes itself to be great film-making, when
in fact it’s as average as cornflakes.
Even the more effective moments only work because they are so manipulative: the confrontation at
gunpoint between the locksmith and shop owner, and the rescue of Thandie Newton
from a burning car by Matt Dillon’s brutish cop. When they are happening, these
moments are strangely gripping – but literally the instant they finish, you are
struck by how Haggis has filmed them in such an operatic, balls-to-the-wall way
you would have to work pretty hard not to be swept up in them. Effective
manipulation is still manipulation – and manipulation really shouldn’t be this
easy to spot. Certainly not within seconds of it happening.
But nearly all the characters are so simple and cookie-cutter
that, despite the quality of the acting, you never connect with them. It
doesn’t help that Haggis’ unsubtle screenplay is desperate to point up
“surprise” personality twists – the “you think they are like this, but look:
here they behaving totally differently. People are more complex than you think!”
card is played so often it starts getting worn out. All of this serves to boil
down to a trite message that when we try and get along with each other
everything eventually might work its way out. Oh please, give me a break.
The acting, though, is actually pretty good. Sure Brenda
Fraser is horribly miscast, and Don Cheadle is stuck with a terrifically boring
cop who has to hold some of the narrative threads together, but there are
plenty of decent performances. Sandra Bullock gets to show she has some solid
dramatic chops, Thandie Newton is a pretty much a revelation as a seemingly
shrewish wife, Terrence Howard mines a lot out of a clichéd middle-class black
man going through a mid-life crisis. Ludacris and Lorenz Tate are excellent as
the two gangbangers, although their dialogue and actions never feel real at
all. Michael Peña is very endearing as just about the only outright likeable
character. Dillon got a lot of praise (and an Oscar nomination) as the racist
cop and he is fine (though dozens of
actors could do what he does here), even though the character is thin as paper
and relies on having the two of the best impact scenes.
Dillon’s character is a good example of the film’s moral
shallowness. Perhaps it’s the #MeToo era, but do I think that Dillon’s clearly
racist manner and his sexual assault on Newton’s character is cancelled out
because he saves her from a fire and treats his dying Dad well? I mean, what is
this sort of laziness? The film says “ah ha look viewer you thought he was a
bad guy, but look at his depth”. So forget the sexual assault because he saved
his victim’s life the next day. Wow. Don’t get me started on the contrived
weighting of the scales the film puts together so that our opinion is shifted
on Phillipe’s good cop. The film is full of this sort of clumsy, ham-fisted,
chin stoking, liberal garbage that feels overwhelmingly patronising.
But then this is a film that doesn’t trust you to think. It
is the ultimate middle-class, hand-wringing exercise in “oh if only we could
fix the world through good things” nonsense. It shouts and shouts and shouts at
you about racism, but never really tells you anything other than that bad-tempered,
ignorant people will do bad-tempered ignorant things. It smugly says “of course
we are better, but guess what viewer, this sort of thing does happen”. Only of
course the script is so thin, the general film-making so thuddingly average and
unsubtle, the story and morality so shallow, that its preachy hectoring only
really serves to turn you off. Anyone
with a brain will get the message within the first 10 minutes. The film takes
another hour and a half to catch up with you. The worst Best Picture winner
ever? It’s gotta be up there.
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