My short review of this movie would be to put my hands over my face and yell “AAAAAGGHHHHH!!!!!!” I hate Crash and yet I love it. I don’t know what to say about it, but I feel like I might say a lot.

I stayed away from this movie for a long time for two reasons: one, a stupid one, because it was using such an overused title, which also happens to be the title of one of my personal favourites, David Cronenberg’s Crash; and two, because for some reason people were comparing it to another all-time fave of mine, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia. I imagined the comparisons were based on the whole intertwining stories idea, that this movie would be similar to Magnolia like, say, Playing by Heart was. There’s a similarity to Magnolia here, and it’s to do with coincidences, things that “just happen” even though they seem impossible – something that’s very hard to portray on film. It’s more a thematic similarity than anything else. The storylines here don’t so much intertwine as they simply co-exist on the same time-space frame.

I hate it because it thrives heavily on clichés from start to finish. And I love it for the same reason. This movie will tear audiences apart, because yes it’s pretentious, yes it’s manipulative, but if you let your guard down for a second, it’ll break your heart to pieces, and that’s the sign of powerful stuff. Heck, it splits my own individual brain in two in places. One second I’m practically speaking to the screen, “You’ve gotta be kidding …” and the next I’m simultaneously laughing and crying over the truth, the sadness, the beauty of the twist that follows each and every dumb turn.

The performances are impeccable all around, especially from Matt Dillon and Thandie Newton in a pivotal scene which is an instant favourite (you’ll know it when you see it). Mark Isham’s score is at times kind of weird, a lot like David Holmes Cliff Martinez’ (oops, I meant Martinez – the whole movie reminded me a lot of Traffic, actually) Steven Soderbergh scores. But it soars when it needs to. Which is this movie in a nutshell. 4-star pending 5.

A note about the year. This goes in my 2004 list even though by most accounts it’s a 2005 movie and if it gets any Oscar nominations it’ll be next year. Thing is, I’ve got into the habit of using the IMDb’s system of release years. The earliest general public release is the smartest way to date these things for me. Sometimes, as in this case, it gets awkward, but I think that as time goes on, we’re going to generally get to see movies sooner and sooner after they’re physically finished, so I want my lists to be as future proof as possible. Believe me, I was kind of annoyed to find that this was a “2004” movie, lol, because I was kinda desperate for a movie this good to come along and blow the less than brilliant stuff in my 2005 list away. But this is just the way I want to do things. It doesn’t change the fact that this is a pretty jaw-dropping piece of work.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 19th, 2005 at 2:58 am in 4 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.