A Review of The 2004 Movie Crash

The 2004 film Crash is a low budget highly acclaimed film starring some of the day’s biggest actors and actresses. The film revolves around the different lives of a handful of people over the course of a 36-hour period. It was a riveting drama that entailed a lot of what goes on not just in and around Los Angles where the film takes place but that happens across the globe with regards to some of the social and racial divide we deal with in our daily lives.

The film revolves around several characters moving back and forth between each story line. It has police partners who are in a sexual relationship with each other with one of them spewing hateful racial slurs after getting in a car accident with an Asian women during the opening of the movie. The car accident is the main point of the film which intertwines the characters throughout. The male officer Graham Waters would be the closest thing to the “Main Character” as his story weaves in and out of most of the other characters and he is narrating during the start of the film. There is the lawyer who uses the race card for political gain and whose wife has begun to view race differently after being car jacked by 2 African American men, how 2 African American men deal with the racial stereotypes in today’s day and age.

Some parts were filmed at night and I am not sure if it was due to technology during that time or not, but I found it hard to see the sequences taking place in the dark to an extent. The movie did follow the typical Hollywood narrative style in that it lasted just under the 2-hour mark at 1 hour and 55 minutes. It however did not follow the classic narrative by way of flipping back and forth between multiple story lines throughout the movie and never had real closure on the story lines to wrap the film up. You don’t often see movies with the number of star actor and an actress in it especially for a small budget like this film was. To have high profile actors such as Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Terrence Howard and Brendan Fraser as well as Sandra Bullock and Thandie Newton all come together with a low budget film was a testament to the director Paul Haggis who incidentally is typically a writer and this was his first foray into directing as he wrote this film after a personal experience of being car jacked in Los Angles previously.

The way the director used lighting and camera angles was very diverse throughout the move. During one scene with the father and daughter under a table it was shot with close up shots and angles to go along with a soothing yellow light. Another scene where the couple is pulled over at night as well had close up shots between the characters being night time it was dark with low lighting to go along with the editing of the shots to flow between the characters. The sound throughout the movie really matched was going on with the plot. It was dark and thrilling sound all through the movie.

This film falls into the category of film genres as a drama. With all the different story lines taking place that revolve around racism and discrimination. The emotional highs and lows going through each character throughout.

Even with the accolades and star power within the film I don’t think I would recommend it to anyone as it was just to hard to keep track of the different storylines within the movie at times. It was interesting to watch this movie and not feel the effects of Racism in today’s world with what is going on. The movie was hard to follow at times as it kept jumping between the characters stories which I found at times confusing to follow what was going on. Although it was a well directed film and the story resonates in today’s day and age and adding in the star talent that was involved, I was just unable to follow the film and it certainly did not leave me wanting more.

Works Cited

1. IMDb. (n.d.). Crash (2004) - IMDb. Retrieved from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0375679/
2. Haggis, P. (Director). (2004). Crash [Motion picture]. United States: Lions Gate Films.
3. Ebert, R. (2005, May 6). Crash Movie Review & Film Summary (2005). RogerEbert.com. Retrieved from https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/crash-2005
4. Mowatt, R., & Lemieux, C. (2008). The meaning of the movie Crash and its application to real life. Journal of Religion and Film, 12(1). doi: 10.18081/2154-9787-2008-12-1
5. Mazierska, E., & Rascaroli, L. (2009). Crossing New Europe: Postmodern Travel and the European Road Movie. Wallflower Press.
6. Kellner, D. (2009). Cinema Wars: Hollywood Film and Politics in the Bush-Cheney Era. Wiley-Blackwell.
7. Shaw, T. M. (2012). Contemporary Hollywood Cinema. Routledge.
8. Naficy, H. (2012). An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. Princeton University Press.
9. Thompson, K., & Bordwell, D. (2013). Film History: An Introduction. McGraw-Hill Education.
10. Maniquis, R. (2016). The Representation of Race and Racial Relationships in the Film Crash. In A Companion to American Indie Film (pp. 392-410). Wiley-Blackwell.