Review: Crash

Heavy-handed writing and a paradoxically simplistic rendering of apparently complicated characters don't sink this movie. Good acting, humor and generally decent directing rescue it from cliche.

Following along the lines of a Magnolia or Boogie Nights this movie gives viewers a large cast of characters whose lives become connected with one another in various ways. For the most part, each character is racially intolerant and willing to let others know this; their interactions are implausible, but not artificial. Many people, I'm wiling to bet, think just what Mr. Haggis's characters say.

The same stereotypes that each character so unrealisticaly vocalizes serve as fodder for some of the best racial humor since Def Comedy Jam. At certain points I wondered whether some of the lines were meant to be funny, since I seemed to be the only one laughing. Perhaps this indicates just how racially insensitive I am. Or maybe it just indicates how trivial I think race issues ought to be.

This movie's most valuable insight is that, ultimately, for all of their prejudices, when it matters most, people generally act without regard to race.