BULLSHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was moved by the first half of screenwriter & first time director Paul Haggis' CRASH (he also penned the screenplay for Eastwood's MILLION DOLLAR BABY). Haggis creates interesting character sketches that intrigue & draws some very strong performances from some unlikely actors, namely Sandra Bollock. Yes, I wrote Sandra Bollock. With very little dialogue & not much to work with Bollock expertly brings to life a woman who is a nagging harpy who cannot understand why she is the way she is. "I wake up every day & I'm angry" she dejectedly tells a friend, "& I just can't stop it. I don't know how to feel any other way anymore". The way the line is delivered & Bollock's subsequent scene may just be the cause for a re-evaluation of this actress. Really. It can be the case that this is a dramatic
actress who really can't do comedy but just did so for years because that's what she stumbled into.
The best performance in the movie though is turned in by Matt Dillon in his oscarworthy performance as a racist cop who may or may not be a racist (or so Haggis would have you believe). Early in the film we witness Dillon's character commit a reprehensible & senseless act of racist brutality & humiliation towards a middle class black couple. Later on we learn details of his background, his private anguish & in what to me is the film's climax--& this is at the halfway mark--he performs an act of redemption that is so dramatic, breathtaking & touching yet so in keeping with his character that I almost had tears in my eyes.
For the first half of the film Haggis presents world weary Los Angelinos who are just fed up with bullshit. Don Cheedle's character narrates the opening of the film & tells us that "LA is unlike other cities where people can walk by & brush up against eachother. Here we're all isolated from eachother. We want the contact of others but recoil at the first hint of it". Then we're introduced to a cross section of LA citizenry & I had the feeling during the first couple of reels that what I was witnessing was a grittier MAGNOLIA or SHORT CUTS. We meet people who are imprisoned by their race, class, political ideology, social position, etc. These are people who want to break out & break through be it Bollock's high strung politician's wife or Cheedle's detective who is forced to put a phony politically correct spin on a racial shooting, or Ryan Phillipe's rookie cop & Dillon's partner who is sickened by Dillon's behavior but hasn't the guts to do anything about it.
It's Dillon's character who first breaks through in a scene that shouldn't work but does. And then...to say CRASH falls apart from that point is too much of an understatement. It begins to preach, then nag & finally it insulted & offended me so deeply that at the end credits I muttered "fuck you" at it. My boyfrend knew exactly who/what I was addressing & nodded in agreement. After we see the "good" side of Dillon's character then the progressively more ludicrous plot begins to kick in as characters are moved about like Chinese checkers & sent in directions for no other reason than to make a point—a VERY politically correct point. Every character who we first meet as a "good guy/gal" will do something awful & an earlier villain will do something redemptive. CRASH gets to the point where it feels like one of the early FRIDAY THE 13th films where you know at the onset there will be 13 deaths so during the film's running time you simply count down the murders. In CRASH you begin to count down which "good" person will do something bad & visa versa until you agonizingly wait until the last baddie/goodie has shown their other side.
What so infuriates me about CRASH is that for its first half I was truly emotionally invested in these characters & really cared about them. By the end I couldn't have cared less if they had been attacked by an army of vampires & zombies. Quite frankly THAT would've been more plausible then what actually occurs on screen.
CRASH is a perfect example of the kind of high civic minded mush that gives good old fashioned bleeding heart liberalism a bad name. You can almost feel...no, scratch that, you OPPRESSIVELY feel Haggis taking you by the shoulders & shaking you & intoning "everyone has many sides, don't judge lest ye be judged" & other mantras of recent middle of the road relativism.
CRASH has also once & for all turned me off Roger Ebert. He glowingly reviewed this claptrap & I have a feeling why. As we exited the theatre I overheard a conversation between 2 guys, one of which made the same complaints I made above only to get this reply from his buddy:
"yes that's true but its important for people in this country to see this movie & understand its message".
I was so disgusted by what I heard I began to say something but thought better of it, but then blurted out "you 2 aren;t from New York, are you?"
"No, we're not" one of them replied, bewildered.
"Well, thank God for that!" I sighed in relief as my boyfriend & I walked down Second Avenue (we were at the Lowes Kips bey in Manhattan).
I have a feeling that Ebert had a similar viewpoint when he praised this crap. He's been around too long & is too well versed in film to not see this overlong PSA for what it is. This smug high mindedness is exactly what has tuned people off from the Left & is Hollywood Limousine Liberalism at its worst (its no better/worse than NYC Limo Liberalism btw). I have a feeling there are WAY too many people who have the same attitude of the jerk I encountered outside the theatre. As a bonafide Leftie Liberal it makes me sick when posers think they're Liberals when they're really just high minded prigs who think they know what's best for everyone else. That's how fascists & tyrants of every ilk think as well.
CRASH also has also achieved something so vile that if I ever meet Haggis I will sucker punch him: the day after seeing it I saw a few minutes of HENRY'S FILM CORNER, that awful review show on IFC where the Lenny Kravitz of alternative rock, Henry Rollins, spews his (usually) purile & sophomoric views of film. The evil that Haggis has done is that he's actually made me agree on something with Henry The Halfwit as Rollins pretty much nailed this flick with his withering review. Anything that puts anyone on the same wavelength as the mega-poser Henry Rollins is inherently satanic
[btw as an old punk, circa 77 I can tell you that Henry Rollins is as much a punk as Fred Durst is a rapper]
