Crash

Crash is a movie that takes several people and intertwines them.  You have a  a police detective with a drugged out mother and a troublesome younger brother, two car thieves who are constantly theorizing on society and race, the district attorney and his irritated and spoiled wife, a racist veteran cop who disgusts his more idealistic younger partner, a successful Hollywood director and his wife who must deal with the racist cop, a Persian-immigrant father who buys a gun to protect his shop, a Hispanic locksmith and his young daughter who is afraid of bullets.  The theme of the film focuses on the social problem of racism in our society.  Modern filmmakers are very concerned with social problems and show their concern in films that expose social vices and follies or criticize social institutions. The Art of Watching Films pg 27  Examples are the way Karen is violated by the racist vetern cop John Ryan or how Jean Cabbot has a tantrum about the changing the locks and says, "your amigo in there is gonna sell our key to one of his homies."

This is another crediable story that shows the way things really are.  The significance in the title is that all of their lives intertwine within a 36 hour time period, essentially 'crash' together.  The story is told in a linear structure and shows you the characters and then begins with the complications.  Crash also uses different film stock, most of the film is done with smooth grain, while there are moments of rough-grain. This film takes place in LA in relatively current times.  Most of the movies was filmed on scene and not in a studio.  Crash had a very minimal budget so director Paul Haggis had to cut the costs by using his own house for scenes and even his own car for other scenes. Crash was filmed in a short 36 days.  The Directors cut of this film is only 3 minutes longer than the original version, extending the scene where Daniel is trying to convince his daughter to get out from under the bed.  The story begins in the medias res with a car crash on Mullholland Drive.  The movie then starts over and shows how all parties arrived. 

The cast of Crash, Sandra Bullock, was so committed to appearing in this film that she bought her own plane ticket to fly to the set. Also, is well renowned for her role, she has less than 6 minutes of actual screen time throughout the entire film.  Two Koreans were intentionally cast as the "Chinese" couple to underscore the fact that most non-Asians cannot or don't care to differentiate between the various Asian nationalities and instead choose to refer to all of them (Chinese, Korean, Thai, Japanese, etc.) as "Chinese", like the characters in the movie do. (IMBD)  The actors made you believe they were the characters in the film.  The ultimate goal of any actor should be to make us believe completely in the reality of the character.  The Art of Watching Films pg 319

This film is rated R for language, sexual content and some violence in the US.  For society is shows us real problems that have been and are happening from the racism to corrupt officials to property theft and crime.