Agreed. I’ll call it watchable the FIRST TIME, but that’s more thanks to the cast than anything else.
In the Valley of Elah? Just as trite, but slightly better served by it. Slightly. Again, the cast does a lot for it.
“in applying the Joe Queenan theory—that what truly are the worst movies ever made are not the outrageously stupid ones, or any B-movie or disturbing film-school-student feature that lacked any ambition, quality or determination, but the ones that shot for the moon and offshooted, ones that bugged you, ones that stuck with you for a long, long time”
You’re how old again? You’re getting a great head start on that Pulitzer Prize.
Clearly an offensive movie. The premise seemed to be: everyone in L.A. is messed up to some degree, but don’t blame them, it’s because they live under such high stress. No wonder the Hollywoodians loved it.
Crash is tepid PC porridge, but I must admit to being impressed that a movie this expansive with a cast that large and filled with A-listers got made for 6.5 million.
Also, I must step up to defend In The Valley of Elah. That is a far superior film, made with great nuance and restraint, and has a tremendous performance from Tommy Lee Jones.
I started giggling during the opening monologue, and it just got worse from there. Stupid, vapid film. Roger Ebert’s Best Film Of The Year.
I despised the film, well done Aaron, you’re remarkable (even if i completely disagreed with you, your articulate maturity and intellect would still be astounding). And right about the worst films. Passion of Christ, the overblown and pretentious.. In Crash, in every racist cop there’s a hero ready to come out? But of course the film takes great pains to cover its angles, not to be simplistic or one-sided in its portrayals. Tepid PC porridge indeed. It’s phoney i think. The hardly revolutuionary Brokeback Mountain was i guess more challenging to Hollywood, which shows how far there is still to travel. I disliked The Valley of Elah too. It may have had more restraint, it was well acted, a superior piece of film-making but (my reading of) the overall political message- i don’t know what the participants were intending- again gives me the creeps.
It’s weird that Haggis created one of my favorite TV series, the deftly funny DUE SOUTH, and has gone on to write & direct some of the most ham-handed, puffed-up-with-their-own-importance films to invade multiplexes everywhere.
Definately one of the worst years in the history of the Oscars.
Not much of a discussion necessary. Never met an intelligible person who thinks its anything but garbage. Rephrase: “Crash? More like Trash.”
So Roger Ebert isn’t intelligible?
“met”?
What do you expect from a man that shares a name with one of the world’s most reviled dishes.
I think it’s an alright movie. But then again, I have nothing to support that. To be honest, I’m bored and this forum was at the top of the list.
I agree, it’s a terrible movie. I actually laughed throughout the entire ending.
How could this have been nominated for any Oscars? Hell, it’s not even MTV Awards worthy..
If there’s a film that is universally panned and reviled, this is it. I think I’m the only one on this site that thinks this is a good movie—indeed, I’d say it’s one of the best movies on racism! (Actually, I think I know one other person on the site who kinda liked this, but I’ll let him/her decide if he/she wants to reveal his/her identity.)
Oh, Jazz, say it ain’t so. This bogus flick has all the depth of a Very Special Episode of Diff’rent Strokes.
@Roscoe,
See, I was preparing myself to defend this film, but I don’t think we can have a reasonable and civil conversation about race. (I draw the line at politics and religion…well, strike religion. :) But you’re tempting me. :)
I liked it, I thought it was entertaining and kept me interested.
@Ryan
You’re the only other person I recall liking (or at least openly admitting that you liked) this film. :)
I would like to hear your thoughts Jazzaloha.
Only one segment, the one where Terrance Howard is at work with Tony Danza and he keeps telling him that the character should sound more “street” or something gets close to addressing the routine humiliation and condescension that colored folks face in integrated everyday life.
The Sandra Bullock plot, the fact that everyone – even the racist cop/sexual harasser and child killer – are redeemed except for the ‘evil’ caricatured Korean couple is why this movie is ridiculous. Certainly entertaining at points but ridiculous.
Nothing but a Man, Do the Right Thing, Killer of Sheep, Pinky, Gentleman’s Agreement even Come See the Paradise – those are movies that address race (and religious orientation) well
What Kyo said.
Moreover…entertainment and artistic integrity are two far and away divisive terms when it comes to discussing artistic origins and intents of a work from whatever artistic field. I may be entertained by Goonies but it doesn’t offer me any stimulating pulse. So Crash MAY be entertaining to “some” but what more does it say? It addresses a selective narrative of “racism accusation” and like Kyo said, it doesn’t resolve issues, it instead promotes racism even more!!!
We have to finally come to terms when talking about Art and Entertainment. Crash by the way is BAD Entertainment.
Was Bullock’s character “redeemed?” How? (By redeemed, do you mean that the film eventually portrayed her in a positive light?)
The film definitely has some big problems, but…well, I’ll leave it at that.
Not ‘redeemed’ but it was portrayed like her racism was cured after she flopped down the stairs and her maid helped her.
The only part of Crash that I think promotes racism is the scene where Matt Dillon is allowed to go on a tangent about affirmative action and welfare mothers while the black woman just sits there and doesn’t say anything or one of a million things she could have said to refute his argument and shut it down .
Maybe Haggis was trying to get the audience to see what a horrible asshole Dillon’s character was through that speech but outside of LA those racist arguments are actually pretty much the dominant discourse so allowing them to go unanswered within the film and coming out the mouth of the movie’s most recognizable/charismatic actor was a serious mistake. Especially considering Dillon’s later redemption. Suddenly in retrospect that monologue doesn’t look like hateful venom but renegade un-PC iconoclast behavior to the viewer that partially sympathizes
It showed that Haggis did not know enough about various cinematic codes of meaning to understand how the structure of his narrative (and casting) would actually nullify the message of his narrative.
Malik said, "
Not ‘redeemed’ but it was portrayed like her racism was cured after she flopped down the stairs and her maid helped her."
I don’t remember this. I’m going to have to watch that part again.
The only part of Crash that I think promotes racism is the scene where Matt Dillon is allowed to go on a tangent about affirmative action and welfare mothers while the black woman just sits there and doesn’t say anything or one of a million things she could have said to refute his argument and shut it down.
I didn’t interpret the lack of response as promotion of racism. The guy is saying ugly and stupid things—he’s not really rational at that point, too. Personally, I’m not sure how anyone would take what he said seriously.
This movie is a pile of dung.
I think it’s really hard for a white person to make an honest film about race relations in America. It’s not just a lack of awareness. It’s also a self-fulfilling prophecy where the writer/director is desperately trying to avoid seeming racist at all costs and ends up overcompensating, which often leads to some unintentionally racist or condescending results.
I saw a screening of this film in LA right before it exploded. I sat in the theater, writhing in my seat, and seemed to be the only person who wasn’t enjoying it. I had to leave – I got up to smoke a cigarette. While I was standing outside, marveling at the film’s awfulness, I saw a man walking down the street in my direction. I thought to myself, " Wouldn’t it be funny if that were the film’s director, and I could tell him what I thought of his film?" He walked directly up to me, and it was Paul Haggis. He was smiling like he’d just won the lottery. He asked me, “So, you liking the film?” I said “Sure” or something along those lines. That’s my memory of Crash. I returned to the screening and thought it was a rather abominable piece of trash. The screening ended and Matt Dillon and a speaker came to the stage for a Q&A. The speaker began the questions with, “Well, obviously, this is a brilliant film..” I got up and left. True story. Then later I would see the film win best picture, and permanently lose faith and interest in the academy awards.
You should have told him what you really thought! :)
OBVIOUSLY! Hey man, you try taking a sledgehammer to somebody’s parade! To quote Malcolm Tucker, “I’m good, but I can’t hold back the tide”!
Aaron Dumont
I watched it for a second time recently. When I first saw it, I thought it wasn’t good. Now when I see it, it seems absolutely terrible to me. I wrote a review for it:
Among the countless slew and turgid veil of the garishly safe, self-satisfied PC-indulgence fests realeased within the past years, Crash, a monstrous, clunky cumination of the very, very worst of Altman-wannabes and the most tired and bored of overused conventions, in the midst of all the hype and Oscar-snubbing controversy, stood among the most confoundingly successful of them all.
So there’s a huge array of characters living in Los Angeles. Their lives intersect with each other, and they go through an unbearably straightforward series of melodramatic incidents of dilemmas, mainly due to a car crash, something that opens and ends the film. The movie as a whole is executed in a pretend-mythical style—astoundingly overused, absurdly glossy spiritual symbols, artificial, indulgent melodramatics instead of genuine humanity and insight, and the characters—portrayed as either victimized angels or bigoted demons that then become victimized angels. The thing is, the execution, the images, the movie itself is so clean, so manufactured, so mass-produced, it feels like a plastic shell. The characters are nothing more than pop abstractions that begin with little-to-none dimension and, paradoxically, lose dimension as they progress. The social and cultural tidbits portrayed here are illustrated in straight, bold, average, ugly lines. Crash’s formality feels so out-of-place, so uncomfortable, that even with any redeeming values, it’s all impossible to forgive.
Now, technically speaking, it’s not the worst movie ever made, and it’s not the worst of the decade, either. In fact, on the guidelines of these said ‘technical’ assumptions it’s not even the worst of of 2005. However, in applying the Joe Queenan theory—that what truly are the worst movies ever made are not the outrageously stupid ones, or any B-movie or disturbing film-school-student feature that lacked any ambition, quality or determination, but the ones that shot for the moon and offshooted, ones that bugged you, ones that stuck with you for a long, long time—it really is the worst of its year, and one of the worst of the decade (only The Village, The Passion of the Christ, Hancock and a few others fare worse). It’s wildly visionary approach simply felt like such a great, mammoth-scale failure when experienced. It got to me. It bugged me. The whimper this movie got out of such a fruitful idea was simply sad to watch. Any faint, faint, faint merits or respectable attempts for greatness make it seem all the more heart-breakingly terrible—so much wasted, so more dubious this pretentious, cheap disaster seems.
The whole, a deformed pastiche of political blindness, soulessness and emptiness, appeared to me as a lifeless, rushed scam--a movie that feeds off mass consensus of opinion without trying anything revolutionary itself, and a movie that gives itself the undeserved assertion that it really is revolutionary—it pathetically, quitely follows the crowd and obnoxiously assumes that it’s leading it. Shameful, because it could’ve been so much more—something modest, something in-touch, something relevant—something tolerable.
Does anyone here agree? Or, better yet, disagree? If so, could you defend the movie? Or any fans of this movie here that simply want to vent their anger at me?