Crash

Paul Haggis follows up his award winner screenplay of Million Dollar Baby with another brutal story, this time about the lives of people of different race and nationalities in Los Angeles, California. The characters are real, and the actor's portraying them are all excellent, in Crash, cowritten by Bobby Moresco.

There's rich DA Rick (Brendan Fraser) and his wife Jean (Sandra Bullock), LAPD officer Ryan (Matt Dillon) and his rookie partner Hanson (Ryan Phillippe), Detective Graham (Don Cheadle) and latina partner and also lover Ria (Jennifer Esposito), Movie director Cameron (Terrence Howard) and wife Christine (Thandie Newton), thieves Anthony (Ludacris) and Peter (Larenz Tate), Mexican locksmith Daniel (Michael Peña), and finally Persian shop owner Farhad (Shaun Toub). Some of them discriminate, some of them are discriminated, and all of them suffer in one way or another.

Top performances go to Matt Dillon as a corrupt officer who abuses a black couple because he can, but that at home suffers with his father, an old man with an urinary track infection his insurance wont cover. Then Terrence Howard and Thandie (I can't believe I'm giving her props and I usually hate her) Newton as the abused couple who then have problems with their marriage. Ludacris was also a real surprised as a thief who likes to point out the different ways black people are abused by the white people, and then he goes on to steal from them. Shaun Toub was also very good as a man whose shops gets trashed all the time because people assume he's Iraqi, when he actually is Persian, so he blames the Mexican locksmith who changed the locks of the shop but also advised him to change the entire door which he never did. Michael Peña, as the hardworking Mexican locksmith who moved his family to a new and better neighborhood, has a great scene with his 5 year old daughter. Great performance by him. The rest of the cast was also very good with Brendan Fraser being the weakest link if I had to pick one. His character is not very likeable though so that helps picking him.

The heart of the movie is in the dialogue, with the characters always making very tough comments about other races, even with people from that race being in the same room. It's brutal and kind of uncomfortable to hear, but is brilliant. There's also a couple of excellent scenes towards the end of the movie when some of the characters connect and we suffer with them these tragic happenings.
The movie is backed by a superb score that gives us the right tunes every time making the scenes more powerful.

Paul Haggis' second directorial job (after 1993's Red Hot) is close to perfect, boosted by very strong performances by a huge and talented cast of actors, and is one of the best movies of the year.