Crash

Not exactly a love letter to the spirit of tolerance and brotherhood in the City of Angels, Paul Haggis's movie is a compendium of all the worst racist tendencies to be found in any sad conglomeration of human beings. The action takes place over two days, and the script weaves together multiple overlapping tales. The cast is superb, but, while individual sequences are riveting, they fail to coalesce into a meaningful whole. Whatever Haggis's point is (people are inherently hateful and vicious, and only random sparks of humanity illuminate the darkness? Or... people are basically good and caring, but have been beaten down by the corrosive effects of a brutal and indifferent society?) I would hate to be his therapist. It's not that racism doesn't exist, even in the forms depicted; it's just that when all you show is all racism, all the time, it starts to lose its impact. The movie tries to make viewers uncomfortable, and at first it succeeds, but after a while it just makes them fatigued. (Hating takes a lot of energy.) The film's weakness is that virtually every character acts constantly in ways that are hard to believe; racism may or may not be declining in 2005, but most people have learned to suppress their overtly racist behavior, at least in public. One could argue over whether or not that represents progress, but either way, Haggis seems to ignore it.