Crash

Fortunately Sandra Bullock is not the main problem with Crash. She appears fleetingly, in what she probably thought was a good cause, namely an indie Hollywood arthouse show (there are more presentation credits on the show than you should need for a dozen finance plans). She also plays a bitch, always concerned about herself, which rings true and doesn't have the same fairy floss quality that can make you sick even by simply watching a minute or two of her standard outings, like the very uncongenial Misses Congeniality (of course she's only a bitch until self recognition and reaching out occurs, in true Hollywood fantasy style, to her humble housekeeper. Sheesh. Humanity is being nice to your personal Hispanic slave. Only in Hollywood).

No the real problem is that writer director Paul Haggis at some point saw Magnolia, and thought he was Paul Thomas Anderson reincarnated. Sadly, he actually came back as Anderson’s bootlace, because he misses the mixture of toughness and energy that Anderson uses in his kind of storytelling (perhaps it’s the Canadian in Haggis that makes this so).

Strangely, the movie is sitting at 8.5 on the Imdb viewers’ poll, which suggests that many Americans are desperate for decent indie arthouse product instead of the usual ten year old boy bound adaptations of super hero comics, to the point where they will even get behind a false messiah. Sadly the A$1.9 million the show made at the Australian box office is a better indicator – okay for librarians and teachers, but no cross over cigar 

First thing with this kind of show is that you have to have a variety of characters coincidentally meeting up and clashing with each other over a 24 hour period, so the heart of LA can be exposed on the screen. The theme is vaguely about racism and disadvantage and coping and love and the whole damn thing.

The next thing you need is a collegiate cast, who have read the script and showed they want to get aboard as team players. They needn’t be mega stars, but it helps if they’re credentialed. So as well as Sandra Bullock, you get Don Cheadle (as a detective dealing with racism in the force and in his private life), Matt Dillon (as an unhappy and tortured uniformed cop dealing with his father’s suffering), Chris ‘’Ludacris’ Bridges as one of two edgy blacks roaming the streets of Santa Monica,  Jennifer Esposito, Brendan Fraser (who has the misfortune to be married to the bitchy Bullock), Loretta Devine, Aussie actor Thandie Newton, Ryan Phillippe and Larenz Tate. 

Now there’s not much point going into the coincidental and significance laden plot. Suffice to say the characters interact in a variety of ways, from the stealing of cars through to a crazed immigrant deciding to take out a locksmith whom he thinks has dudded him. There’s a lot more, people die, people laugh and cry, and so on, and so on, but no frogs fall from the sky. 

Haggis trades shamelessly on coincidence as a plot device (right down to someone buying blanks instead of bullets, so he can have a feel good moment. Sheesh.)

Tech credits are good, as they say in LA. The cinematography looks moody and atmospheric, and the sound track works hard for the money, as do the obviously committed cast. Unfortunately, the music is atrocious, all sweeping chords and hogwash synth, straining after significance in a way that almost makes the drama seem restrained in places.

If you’re a bleeding heart, you might get something out of the show. But the suggestion that this show is about something in the end gets really irritating, and it suggests that the problem with the world might not be the world, but watching movies like this, which could well send people into a frenzy (unless you buy the idea that bad boys will change their ways when they’re told their embarrassing,. Sheesh, how embarrassing). Yep, rather than significance, there’s a striving for it, and the result comes across often as emotional flatulence in the approved meaningful LA style.

A rough equivalent might be Lawrence Kasdan’s turkey Grand Canyon. If you like this kind of show, then maybe you should drag Crash out of the remainders bin in the rental store, where I found it for a tasty price. Or maybe you should spring for a rental. But actual buying at full price? Save your money for Magnolia, or go back and take a look at David Cronenberg’s more genuinely weird show by the same name. Now there’s a Canadian with a genuine, heartfelt sickness.

Otherwise this show is more crash and burn, than crash and discover the emotional meaning of life. Still, at least Bullock is relatively invisible and does her thing with style (now there’s a concession), so if you like the cast, likely you can endure Haggis’s brand of stomach filling tosh.

 

 

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