Originally published 7/5/2005
Crash
Director: Paul Haggis
Writers: Story by Paul Haggis, screenplay by Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco
Producers: Don Cheadle, Paul Haggis, Mark R. Harris, Bobby Moresco, Cathy Schulman, Bob Yari
Stars: Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Jennifer Esposito, William Fichtner, Brendan Fraser, Terrence Howard, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Thandie Newton, Ryan Phillippe, Larenz Tate, Tony Danza, Keith David, Shaun Toub, Loretta Devine, Michael Peña, Bahar Soomekh, Ashlyn Sanchez, Nona Gaye
Idea movies are a rough trade. Most filmmakers who enter into them do so with arrogant confidence – they have pierced some problem with society and are here to walk us plebes through their enlightened answer. It takes a gutsier storyteller to compose a movie around an idea for which he has hope, but no easy solution, because these ideas tend to be more worth our time.
Canadian filmmaker Paul Haggis, fresh off of writing and producing Clint Eastwood’s award-magnet Million Dollar Baby, directs for himself with Crash and serves up an ambitious ensemble drama in an era where most movie studios barely consider drama a genre worth consideration. Tracking over a dozen characters through a 36-hour period in Los Angeles (why do sprawling stories like Short Cuts and Magnolia seem like such a fit for the City of Angels?), he watches their individual worlds collide with one another, makes room for the most unexpected encounters and revelations, and stirs up an astonishing variety of racial conflicts.
But he treats racism not as a disease of humanity but one of its symptoms, a tipping point intersection of anger, ignorance and fear. Nearly every character in the film displays some prejudice or cruelty, but Haggis isn’t satisfied to let that be their judgment – he goes further, not to explain their bigotry but to see what else is inside.
Anthony and Peter (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges and Larenz Tate) are clean, articulately verbose, and each angry in their own way at the fearful looks they get from white passersby. Spiting their own sense of injustice, they pull guns and steal an S.U.V. from two of those passersby, Richard and Jean Cabot (Brendan Fraser and Sandra Bullock). Richard is a successful young district attorney with sights set higher still, Jean is his well-maintained wife and a familiar L.A. type – unappreciative of the extent her life is managed by her Latino housekeeper Maria (Yomi Perry), and convinced that the tattoos on the locksmith (Michael Peña) mean he is a “gangbanger” and is going to sell their new key to other “gangbangers” so she can be robbed again.
The locksmith may have danger in his past, but now he is a family man, working long shifts at honest work to put a safer roof over the head of his daughter (Ashlyn Sanchez). One of his customers is an Iranian convenience store owner (Shaun Toub) who does not speak much English, thinks everyone is out to cheat him, and hopes buying a gun will stop him from being wronged.
Then there’s the successful black television director (Terence Howard) who visibly swallows a pound of his pride when a producer (Tony Danza) suggests he re-shoot a scene because the black character sounds too “educated”; and who must watch, humiliated, when hostile police Sergeant Ryan (Matt Dillon) pulls him over, harasses him, and fondles his wife (Thandie Newton).
And there is that angry cop’s partner (Ryan Phillipe), who wants to bring justice on Ryan but is thwarted in a most unexpected and embarrassing manner. And Homicide Detective Graham Waters (Don Cheadle) who thinks more is afoot in the case of a white detective shooting an off-duty black cop, but is pressured to accept the easy racial explanation.
I could spend paragraphs more just setting up incident and interaction – Haggis’ gift as a veteran television writer/producer is an instinctive shorthand, he can establish relationships and nuances to characters with one action and deft line of dialogue without you feeling like you are meeting a stock personality. Watch how your comprehension of Detective Waters’ family bonds continues to grow richer with every detail, and how every time you think you have solved the root of Sgt. Ryan’s rage he reaches across your imposed expectations and surprises you again.
Anger is important – impotent anger at faceless HMOs and insurance companies who leave the unfortunate dangling. Their representatives have no more important job than intercepting frustrated rage which is not their making. There is righteous anger at wishing you lived in a world where your injuries at the hands of the powerful could be avenged. Jean makes an important leap when she describes to her friend how angry she is at being mugged, then realizes that it wasn’t just the mugging – she is this angry every day.
Its rough humor has politically incorrect shock value, its melodramatic heights are tear-worthy if you are open to that sort of thing. Time and time again we are spun to the absolute brink of tragedy, but can see also that in each of these dark moments is an opportunity for growth and new understanding.
The movie cannot help that some of its most dynamically effective moments occur in the middle, its coda feels overlong and less sure of itself, but as title and subject matter imply this is not meant to be a clean and structured experience. Crash is daring – how audaciously it orchestrates its suite of coincidences and plays with your emotions is a tribute to the skills of both Haggis and the ensemble he assembles (Cheadle, Howard and Peña are standouts in a field of standouts). It’s a complex film worthy of the complexities of its subject, because it breaks through racism’s distracting trappings and squares up with the primal emotional guts of it. One of the best I’ve seen in 2005 so far.