A Movie Review

This film has a compelling story that has various characters that come from different races and background whose lives are intertwined with each other and set in the city of Los Angeles.

It shows the racial disrespect and contempt in the city as well as the drug culture. It is a contemporary film that characterizes a group of racially diverse individuals where one will see whites, blacks, Asians and Hipics. Each character is portrayed in different racial discrimination situations as an offender at one point in the story and a victim in another.

A movie so full of strong racist language and intense confrontations where everyone seems angry and scared of being blatantly discriminated because of their color, yet at the same time each has their own narrow-mindedness that moves them to do the same.

The utterances of uncouth words were seemingly done recklessly, inconsiderately or deliberately which somehow leads to violence and crimes.  Anyone, in whichever part of the world, who will watch this movie, can somehow relate to at least one character wherein one shares the same fears, hopes and at times feels impelled to retaliate when pushed to a corner.

In one scene, the character named Ria, the Latina detective, had a vehicular mishap with an Asian woman (who mispronounced the word brake as blake) whom she told sarcastically, “…you don’t see my blake lights. See, I stop when I see a long line of cars stopped in front of me. Maybe you see over the steering wheel, you’ll blake too”.  That coming from Ria’s mouth who was also racially discriminated by his own black boyfriend.

Several movie reviews has rated this movie with four stars or more.  These movie reviews influence the in some ways help in the success or the failure of a particular movie.  It aids the moviegoers decide whether it is worthy of our time and money to watch or not.  There are reviews that are either made objectively and subjectively.

According to Amber Deggans, who writes for the reel reviews, watching the film is like watching a documentary. The rawness of the emotions of the characters touches us deeply.

The portrayal of the abusive and racist cop named Officer John Ryan impels us to hate him for his attitude towards the black community yet seeing him comforting his sick father is so contradictory which just shows us that there is always a good side to people. Film makers usually do their utmost to reach the audience and impart to them that there is a need to stop the anger among us but not many were successful in doing this except for this movie.

The characterization of each role was ultimately conveyed to the audience.  The performance of the actors was exceptionally done resulting for the film’s message to be thoroughly communicated. Scenes were sometimes so poignant that it becomes hard for the viewer not to be moved especially if at some point in our lives, we may have encountered a relatively similar if not the exact situation as shown in the movie.

 Roger Ebert, who is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American film critic and screen writer rated this movie with four stars. As conclusion to his review, Ebert mentioned, “I don’t expect “Crash” to work any miracles, but I believe anyone seeing it is likely to be moved to have a little more sympathy for people not like themselves. The movie contains hurt, coldness and cruelty, but is it without hope? Not at all.”

Some scenes from this movie give us surprisingly unexpected but realistic glimpses of certain inequities that real people also come across. For a movie that didn’t have ample budget for its production, parts of the movie were quite represented realistically and naturally. Crash strongly depicts a reality that none of us can refute and forces us to face the truth, that each of us carry our own prejudice regardless of which race we belong to.  The social impact of this movie would hopefully lead to a realization of a racist-free community.

WORKS CITED

Crash. Dir. Paul Haggis. Perfs. Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Jennifer Esposito,

Brendan Fraser, Thandie Newton, Terence Howard, Ryan Philippe. DVD. Lions Gate Production. 2005.

Deggans, Amber. “MovieReview”. Frank’s Reel Reviews. 2005.4 December 2007. <http://www.franksreelreviews.com/reviews/2005/crash2.htm#review

Ebert, Roger. “Crash: When Racial Worlds Collide”. Chicago Sun Times. 5 May 2005. 4 December 2007. <http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=

/20050505/REVIEWS/50502001/1023>