First of all, I don't remember seeing any previews for this film, or even knowing it existed till it showed up under "New Releases" on Netflix, so it was obviously not very well advertised. This seems like the type of film that could have had a cult following if they had just gotten the word out about it. Unfortunately for the people desiring big bucks from this, it was not a huge blockbuster.
Crash stars a large group of actors and actresses (Don Cheadle, Jennifer Esposito, Matt Dillon, Ryan Phillippe, Sandra Bullock, Brendan Fraser, Thandie Newton, Terrence Howard, and many others) and there were no real main characters. The film is really about the lives of twenty-five (or so) individuals living in
Los Angeles. Though many of these individuals are complete strangers, the viewer of the film gets to know the background stories of the lives of these individuals, and though they are unaware of it, how they affect the lives of one another.
Review
One major problem with this film is that twenty-five complete strangers in a metropolitan city like Los Angeles with a population of nearly 10 million people would never have any kind of effect on one another. Don Cheadle's character, Graham Waters, opens the film by saying "It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something." In real-life, the individuals would meet, interact, and then never see or hear from them again. The film is based on the whole idea that "it's a small world after all," and it's really not; in-fact, it's a big, big world. I can understand how this strangers affecting one another thing could have worked in a smaller town (but not too small, because then they'd know that they affected one another), but in Los Angeles, it's just not feasible.
This film was largely centered around a theme of racism as well as the "it's a small world" theme. There were people of all different races, and racism caused many of the problems throughout the film. It is abundantly clear that the director is trying to prove a point when Ria (Jennifer Esposito) says in response to being referred to as Mexican, "My father is from Puerto Rico, my mother is from El Salvador; neither of those is Mexico." In spite of this frustration, each character was a stereotype, desperately trying to break free of the stereotypes that they lived in the film. In spite of the fact that many of the characters were victims of racism themselves, they all continued to oppress people of different races, and that, though it may happen in real-life, is ridiculous.
An interesting way of drawing the audience's attention to a particular detail is to force them to look at it. There were lots of times throughout the film when the camera would pay particular attention to an object, often pausing on it after the character had left the room and the scene. These objects and the shots of them were a form of foreshadowing, as the characters would come back to them and they would have some relevance later in the stories. This was an interesting way of doing things rather than leaving the audience to figure out for themselves what was going on, though I'm sure we could have handled it.
In spite of the fact that the film is about more than twenty different characters, each character is given a certain amount of depth to them. There were at least eight different stories taking place at the same time, so this was no easy feat. Most of the characters, however, fall into common stereotypes. The audience is given a gradually more accurate sense of who they are as a person as the film goes on, which is often how people interact with one another; stereotype them, and then as you get to know them, watch them break that stereotype. Many of the characters in the film go through some type of revelation, and at the end of the film they are somehow changed, for better or for worse.
Conclusion
The idea for this film was an interesting one, but there was so much going on all the time and everything was one huge coincidence that it was a bit too unbelievable. It might have also been better if they hadn't tried to explore the life stories of so many of the characters. There was a lot going on, and they crammed it all into a two-hour movie, so there was a lot to take in during that short period of time. This film definitely had a unique idea behind it, but the method they went about showing how strangers can affect each-other's lives was not the best. The large number of storylines almost reminded me of Sin City in the way that there were several different things going on, but in Crash, there were more main characters, and more storylines to follow.
