 |
 |
|
|
buying more than one thing? (uses Multi-Item Price Optimization™) ...or |
||
 |
 |
intereact!Director: Paul Haggis
Actors: Karina Arroyave, Dato Bakhtadze, Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, and Art Chudabala
Rated: R (Restricted)
Retail Price (not our price): $14.98
Release Date: 2005-09-06
Theatrical Release Date: 2005-05-06
Studio: Lions Gate
Run Time: 122 minutes
Format: Array
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Discs: 1
Editorial Reviews (supplied by Amazon.com):
1) Amazon.com
Movie studios, by and large, avoid controversial subjects like race the way you might avoid a hive of angry bees. So it's remarkable that Crash even got made; that it's a rich, intelligent, and moving exploration of the interlocking lives of a dozen Los Angeles residents--black, white, latino, Asian, and Persian--is downright amazing. A politically nervous district attorney (Brendan Fraser) and his high-strung wife (Sandra Bullock, biting into a welcome change of pace from Miss Congeniality) get car-jacked by an oddly sociological pair of young black men (Larenz Tate and Chris "Ludacris" Bridges); a rich black T.V. director (Terrence Howard) and his wife (Thandie Newton) get pulled over by a white racist cop (Matt Dillon) and his reluctant partner (Ryan Phillipe); a detective (Don Cheadle) and his Latina partner and lover (Jennifer Esposito) investigate a white cop who shot a black cop--these are only three of the interlocking stories that reach up and down class lines. Writer/director Paul Haggis (who wrote the screenplay for Million Dollar Baby) spins every character in unpredictable directions, refusing to let anyone sink into a stereotype. The cast--ranging from the famous names above to lesser-known but just as capable actors like Michael Pena (Buffalo Soldiers) and Loretta Devine (Woman Thou Art Loosed)--meets the strong script head-on, delivering galvanizing performances in short vignettes, brief glimpses that build with gut-wrenching force. This sort of multi-character mosaic is hard to pull off; Crash rivals such classics as Nashville and Short Cuts. A knockout. --Bret FetzerStills from Crash (click for larger image)2) Description
They all live in Los Angeles. And in the next 36 hours, they will collide.
Customer Reviews (supplied by Amazon.com):
Average Customer Rating: 3.5 out of 5
1) How lame. [Rating: 2 out of 5]
This was nominated as the best movie of the year? Jeez. How sad. The issues this movie addresses are important, but the way in which is addresses them is facile and heavyhanded. The main problem is with the script: a talented ensemble of actors do their best with a cliche-ridden, overly-obvious, ham-fisted series of vignettes in which every character in wildly implausible manners -- openly insulting people who are likely to do them bodily harm, preaching at each other about race relations, spouting leaden exposition at every turn... Ostensibly this is a latticework of interconnected stories, ala Robert Altman, but Haggis has little of the naturalness that Altman brought to bear. Every plot twist and "reveal" is exactly what you think it will be: this film has no genuine surprises, just as its characters have no genuine motivations. They are all stick-figure stereotypes, drafted in the service of a Hollywoodized ideal of redemption. It is a sign of just how bad race issues in America are that so many people thought this was a laudable work of art. If this film had even an ounce of subtlety, it would have have been far more worthy of the adulation it received. I had been looking forward to seeing it -- boy, what a disappointment. (Axton)2) Beautiful Patchwork [Rating: 4 out of 5]
The idea that urban violence is simply a way for alienated city folk to reach out and touch each other is just one of the many original thoughts floating through Paul Haggis' Crash (as distinguished from David Cronenberg's Crash), a movie filled with original thoughts (making it doubly regrettable it doesn't have a more original title). Crash is a film about lives in the balance, another LA montage (Short Cuts, Magnolia) but probably the best so far. It weaves together its separate strands and disparate characters into a frighteningly beautiful patchwork, a fully grown up film about conflicted people and people in conflict. The subtext of Crash is intercity racial tension, but this never becomes a theme, rather it seems an inevitable and natural backdrop to the story, or indeed to any story set in a contemporary American city, and most especially in LA. A white racist cop who is also a loving son turns out to be a genuine hero. A good, non-prejudiced rookie cop winds up committing a murder. A young back hood railing against "[...]" stereotyping ends up becoming one himself. An angry young professional woman struggling to separate prejudice from common sense in stereotyping criminal types by their race and appearance winds up all alone with her anger. A pathological, revenge-driven Persian shop owner, sick and tired of being harassed and type-cast as an Arab, begins acting like a terrorist.Crash offers up a dozen or so such characters wrestling with their identity and placement inside the melting pot of America as it nears boiling point. Paul Haggis' film doesn't reduce questions of racial prejudice to mere ideology or political incorrectness, however, which in the world of movies-by-numbers is something of a miracle. Instead he allows prejudice simply to exist, without judging it, an integral part of the life of his characters and the substance of their world. If everyone is racist, he seems to say, then no one is. Prejudice is inevitable when different races are forced to live together without any real means of interrelation. It's human instinct to distrust what is different from ourselves, after all, and the film isn't afraid to show how sometimes prejudice can even be justified (though it also makes it clear that most of the time it isn't). The biggest problem, Haggis may be suggesting, is when these natural feelings of suspicion or hostility towards others are denied verbal or emotional expression, and so can fester and grow until they come out in acts. Hence, "crash."In Crash, the cracker cop (Matt Dillon) seems utterly irredeemable in his first scene, yet by the end of the movie he has become one of the most sympathetic characters in a film filled with sympathetic characters (even the deranged Arab, uh, Persian, invokes pity). Of course, sympathetic doesn't necessarily mean likeable, although Hollywood movies never seem to acknowledge that there is a difference, and that audiences don't have to admire or envy a character in order to relate to him. Haggis doesn't let us judge the Dillon character, for example, by his beliefs. He forces us to stay with him and witness his many other sides. The same woman he humiliates, the cracker cop later rescues from a horrible death. Haggis is intent on showing that people are complex beings, and infinitely greater than the sum of their beliefs, prejudices, and actions.Crash is one of the very few truly adult movies to come out of Hollywood so far this millennium. Its characters are observed not through the narrow crack of Hollywood's conceit, but from the full 360 degrees of a creative imagination. They aren't just given token shadings, these people are nothing but shadings. Haggis never makes the mistake of letting us think we know these people (or that he does), and he never allows us to judge them based on what little we see of them, since every new thing we see contradicts whatever we've seen before. The film seems consciously designed to this end, to remind us of the futility of judging others before all the evidence is in, and of the fact that it never really is. Without a full picture of "the facts," any judgment at all is simply prejudice. Or, as Jimmy Stewart counseled Katherine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story: "The time to make up your mind about people is never."3) Superbly crafted interweaving tales of prejudice [Rating: 5 out of 5]
To talk too much about what happens in Crash would be to take away some of the pleasure, although without doing so it's difficult to describe just what the movie is about. Suffice to say then, it is an interweaving set of characters tales, all of which show the results or origins of bigotry or prejudice, in various guises.It is a fascinating and superbly weaved tale which never relies on thriller tricks to keep you gripped - the drama which will keep you glued here is all driven by the characters. And with such a plethora of characters in the movie, it is incredible that the director, Paul Haggis, managed to leave you at the end with a feeling of understanding of each.The performances from the superb cast are uniformly excellent, with Matt Dillon and Don Cheadle especially shining, and the locations in L.A. seem to perfectly illustrate the anachronism of our age that has thrown into spotlight the differences between races and cultures, living side by side.Highly recommended for thought provoking viewing.4) SUPERB!!! EXTRAORDINARY! Best movie of 2005 [Rating: 5 out of 5]
I'd like to begin by saying that anyone who gave this movie poor reviews is just plain ignorant. Crash is an extraordinary movie that involves one of the best supporting casts I have ever seen. The movie is so powerful that it will send goosebumps throughout your body - I know it did for me. There are so many different plot lines in the movie, and they are all intertwined so perfectly, I don't understand how it's possible for someone to not like this movie. Crash emphasizes a theme that is so prevalent and so important in today's society that I would recommend it over and over again.To put it simply, Crash is just BRILLIANT. I would be proud to include Crash in the list of my top ten favorite movies, EVER, it's that good!To anyone who has not yet seen Crash, you MUST see it. Don't listen to all those pessimists out there who say this movie is not good or that it is unrealistic. First of all, how many movies are actually realistic nowadays, with Hollywood and all? Exactly my point. Secondly, I would argue that the movie IS realistic -- at least its themes are -- and there is no other movie that can begin to touch what Paul Haggis has done here with Crash.Crash truly is a masterpiece. Thought-provoking, emotional, entertaining, and extraordinarly-well written, I would not hesitate to call Crash the best movie of 2005.5) Excellent! [Rating: 5 out of 5]
Very good. Thought provoking. Definately, shows that we are in one way or another linked to each other even if we don't see it. A must see. If you enjoy this movie then I recommend watching "Mystic River" and "Gone Baby Gone." :)