Crash

Crash: This is an excellent film, and entertaining in a disconcerting way. I appreciate movies that make me uncomfortable (within boundaries, of course), and this did manage to do that. Its portrayal of a sexual assault was especially difficult to sit through.

I appreciated the film's willingness to portray racial problems as cutting across racial and socio-economic boundaries. Crash did not pretend this was a white problem or a poor problem, but one that is broad in scope.

This, though, was also the film's most significant weakness. Crash lives in a universe where race colors all the decisions we make, and where we cannot move beyond racial barriers in any meaningful way. In the film, the primary identity of most of the characters is grounded in their race, and while I am sure there are people like that, I am not convinced it is on the same scale as, say, fifty years ago. Crash is well-acted, provocative, and interesting.