Crash

Crash? More... Like... Tuh-- Trash! (that's clever; that's good Paul; keep going).

Bad introductory sentences aside, I didn't find this to be a great movie.

Good? Sure. You could you argue for good. There's a few moments so intense and spellbinding (the fiery car wreck, or the police stand off) that comfortably make this uncomfortable film worth watching. It's good for you; an emotional multivitamin: we shouldn't judge people by their skin! Racism is bad! Etcetera! But Crash as great? Oscar worthy? Really?

I don't have a thing for gay cowboys. I'm not a gay cowboy aficionado; I don't widdle away my conscious moments painstakingly collecting and filling my favorite issues of Country Beefcake magazine (Alphabetical by cover article, then chronological) into moisture-proof Mylar bags to the gypsy kings pumping from my stereo system; It's just something I don't do-- I'm not gay--, but it seems hard to fathom how this won best picture over Brokeback Mountain, over Jake Gyllenhaal's watery blue eyes... Rock hard abs... Mmmm.

The Review! Right:

I didn't hate it, like I do with-- you know, Mexicans, but it didn't strike me as a movie worthy of the praise so liberally slathered upon it by the press. Yeah, I get racism is wrong-- and I get that we're all guilty or prejudice-- and that even the most enlightened and liberal minded of us is predisposed by our nature as human beings (due to an inherent biologically-driven preference towards the familiar) to bigotry-- I know all of this! Having this told to me in movie form doesn't make for good story telling. The format irked me too. While I loved the way they shot the film and the music that went with the stark imagery of the Los Angeles winter, I loathed the "have a buncha awful shit happen to all these people" concept. It renders the movie's message as unsubtle as a tomahawk to the sternum.

Admittedly, I live in a world almost entirely free of overt racial hostility. Everyone around me, my friends, my family, is white. But when I do come across Blacks/Arabs/Persians/Mexicans/whatevers, it's just never that fraught with tension. It could very well be that I'm living in the wrong place for me to relate fully to this film. I don't think that's what it is, though.

Crash could captivate me entirely, but was capable of reinstating my disbelief in equal portions. So officer Hanson will, full of disgust at his racist sexual predator partner, report him and seek a new one? He will risk his career and possibly life to deescalate a near shoot out with the an obviously irate and ready-to-blow black man? But he'll shoot another black man, the one whom he offered a ride, to death for reaching into his pocket after laughing? Police are trained not to be trigger-happy or short-fused. I know it's fiction; that shooting still took me entirely out of the film and back into my community college seat. The exact opposite of how you want to feel at a theater.


Also, I hate Sandra Bullock. God, Remember Speed Two? With the boat? And like, Jason Patrick? Oh man. I hate her so much.