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Kevin Michael Vance
Writer - Portland, Oregon
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Title: CRASH
Director: Paul Haggis
Year: 2004
Reviewed: May 15, 2005
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Four Course Meal-Highest Rating |
[Rating Definitions]
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Crash, the movie, very well might be the best movie this year. Crash gets a FOUR COURSE MEAL review.
There is something all together amazing about Crash… it is not stupid. Crash does not patronize or condescend to the audience. Remarkably, Crash, deals with its viewers as if they were as intelligent as it is. The movie is not easy, it is not fed to us on a fork, the characters are complicated, the themes even more so. There are no hard and fast rules in the story, no easy answers. Every character has a valid point, and every character is flawed. There are many who will see this film and not understand it, just as they do not understand the word ambiguity; albeit I thought the director proved his point very clearly. That point to me was we all make mistakes, and regardless of the size of these mistakes, no one is perfect. Crash struck me as the kind of movie Magnolia attempted to be. You could even say that the snow at the end of Crash was a direct rip-off of the frogs at the end of Magnolia. However, the snow worked much better on an emotional level than the frogs.
Some people will see this movie simply as "depressing". The people behind Melissa and I thought and said as much. Yet this assessment of Crash would be tantamount to saying Good Fella's promoted mob-life, Train Spotting promoted drug use, or Black Hawk Down promoted war. An assessment that is simply wrong. If you see Crash and all you get from it is, and I quote, "Gee… that was a downer"… you need to take a good, long look at yourself. Crash takes a hard, penetrating, thoughtful gaze upon what it means to be human. Pure and simple, convoluted and complex, Crash has more meaning, more depth, more inherent thought and profundity than a bevy of over rated, over hyped summer blockbusters.
Oh… and by the way, the screenplay is brilliant, the acting superb, the direction flawless, and the music by Mark Isham is transcendent. Do not miss this film. Run… do not walk to the theatres to see Crash.
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