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Crash
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Paul Haggis
Screenplay by	Paul Haggis Bobby Moresco
Story by	Paul Haggis
Produced by	Paul Haggis Don Cheadle Bob Yari Cathy Schulman
Starring	Sandra Bullock Don Cheadle Matt Dillon Jennifer Esposito William Fichtner Brendan Fraser Terrence Howard Chris "Ludacris" Bridges Thandie Newton Ryan Phillippe Larenz Tate Michael Pena Shaun Toub
Cinematography	J. Michael Muro
Edited by	Hughes Winborne
Music by	Mark Isham
Production companies	Lions Gate Films, Yari Film Group DEJ Productions
Distributed by	Lions Gate Films (USA) Pathé (UK)
Release dates	September 10, 2004 (2004-09-10) (TIFF) May 6, 2005 (2005-05-06)
Running time	112 minutes
Country	United States Germany
Languages	English Spanish Persian Mandarin Chinese Korean
Budget	$6.5 million
Box office	$98,410,061

Crash is a 2004 (theatrical release 2005) American/German drama film co-written, produced, and directed by Paul Haggis. The film is about racial and social tensions in Los Angeles, California. A self-described "passion piece" for Haggis, Crash was inspired by a real life incident in which his Porsche was carjacked outside a video store on Wilshire Boulevard in 1991. It won three Oscars for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Editing of 2005 at the 78th Academy Awards.

Several characters' stories interweave during two days in Los Angeles; a black LAPD detective estranged from his mother, his criminal younger brother and gang associate, the white District Attorney and his irritated and pampered wife, a racist cop who disgusts his more idealistic younger partner, a Hollywood director and his wife who must deal with the said cop, a Persian-immigrant father who is wary of others and a Hispanic locksmith and his young daughter.

Plot

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The film opens following a car accident involving Los Angeles detective, Graham Waters (Don Cheadle), Ria (Jennifer Esposito), his partner, and Kim Lee. As Ria and Kim Lee exchange racial insults, Waters gets out of the car and investigates the crime scene which had indirectly caused the accident after identifying himself as a detective to the officer in charge. One day prior, a Persian man, Farhad (Shaun Toub), and his daughter Dorri (Bahar Soomekh) are buying a gun, but the shop's owner refuses to sell to them due to their race. Ultimately, an infuriated Farhad is escorted outside. In another part of town, Rick Cabot (Brendan Fraser), the local district attorney, and his wife, Jean (Sandra Bullock) are carjacked by Anthony (Chris "Ludacris" Bridges) and Peter (Larenz Tate). Detectives Waters and Ria arrive on the scene of a shooting between two drivers outside of a store. The surviving shooter is a white male identified as an undercover police officer. The detectives learn that the dead shooter, a black male was also a police officer. Afterwards, at the Cabot house, Daniel Ruiz, a Hispanic locksmith (Michael Pena) is changing the locks. He overhears Jean, who is frustrated having felt nervous about the two black men but refrained from saying anything to avoid appearing racist.

LAPD Officer John Ryan (Matt Dillon) and his partner, Tom Hansen (Ryan Phillippe) begin their evening patrol. They pull over a Navigator similar to the one carjacked earlier, despite discrepancies in the descriptions. They order the couple, director Cameron Thayer (Terrence Howard) and his wife Christine (Thandie Newton) to exit. Cameron is cooperative, but Christine is argumentative. An angry Ryan sexually molests Christine under the pretense of administering a pat-down. Intimidated, Cameron says nothing. When Ryan finishes, the couple is released without a ticket. The next day, Hansen talks to his superior, Lt. Dixon (Keith David) about switching partners. Dixon, a black man, claims that Hansen's charge of Ryan as a racist could cost both Hansen and Dixon their jobs. Dixon suggests a transfer to a one-man car and mockingly tells Hansen that he should justify it by claiming to have uncontrollable flatulence.

At the Thayers' house, Christine is enraged that Cameron did nothing while she was violated. Cameron insists what he did was correct, and the argument ends with Cameron storming out. At his home, Daniel talks to his daughter, Lara, who is hiding under her bed after hearing a gun shot. To comfort her, Daniel gives her an "invisible impenetrable cloak". He then puts her to bed and then gets a page for another locksmith job. In the carjacked SUV, Anthony and Peter, distracted by their argument about racism, hit something while passing by a parked white van. Getting out, they see that what they have run over was an Asian man. Unsure as to what to do, they eventually pull him out from under the car and dump him in front of a hospital.Ryan visits Shaniqua Johnson (Loretta Devine), an insurance representative with whom he argued earlier. Apologizing for insulting her in their prior conversation, he explains that his father was diagnosed with a bladder infection but fears the diagnosis is incorrect and that it may be prostate cancer. Ryan wants him to see a different doctor, but is told that their health plan won't cover it. Coldly, Ryan tells of his father's acts as one who employed black workers when others wouldn’t. He explains that his father’s business was destroyed when the city began to show preference to minority owned businesses.

Waters goes to visit his mother, She asks him to find his younger brother. Waters promises to find him, and notices the lack of food in the apartment before leaving. Outside, he lies to Ria and tells her his mother wasn't home. In the studio where Cameron works, a white producer, Fred (Tony Danza), suggests that a black actor isn't acting "black" enough. Christine is involved in a car accident and trapped inside her overturned car. Ryan is one of the officers who responds to the accident. Upon recognizing Ryan, Christine screams for him to leave, but he is able to get her to agree to allow him to rescue her once he points out to her that gasoline is leaking from the gas tank. With the assistance of his partner and spectators, Ryan manages to pull Christine out just as the car bursts into flames. A grateful but confused Christine looks back at Ryan as she is taken away.Peter is revealed to be Waters' missing brother. Waters’ mother identifies Peter’s body at the morgue and Waters promises to find who is responsible for Peter's death, but his mother tells him she already knows that he killed his brother because he failed to find him as she asked. Dorri comes to see Farhad, who explains what happened. He thinks that the little girl was his angel and tells Dorri it's going to be okay. Dorri removes the pistol and ammunition revealing them to be blanks. Anthony inadvertently returns to the white van from earlier. Finding the keys still in the door, he drives the van away. Kim Lee (the Asian woman from the crash at the film's opening) arrives at a hospital looking for her husband Choi Jin Gui, the man Anthony and Peter hit. Still coherent, he tells her to cash a cheque that he has in his wallet. Anthony takes the white van to a chop shop, and finds a number of Cambodian immigrants locked in the back of the van, revealing that the Asian man was in fact smuggling slaves. The shop owner offers $500 for each. Anthony refuses and takes the slaves to Chinatown where he releases them.

Critical reception

The film received generally positive reviews with the review tallying website Rotten Tomatoes reporting that 148 out of the 196 reviews they tallied were positive for a score of 76% and a certification of "fresh", while metacritic tallied an average score of 69 out of 100 for Crash's critical consensus. Roger Ebert gave the film 4/4 stars and described it as, "a movie of intense fascination" listing it as the best film of 2005. The film also ranks at number 460 in Empire magazine's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time.

Some critics assert that Asians are portrayed in an overwhelmingly negative light with few, if any, redeeming qualities. The film has been criticized for reinforcing Asian stereotypes and lacking any manner of significant development of its Asian characters. From an alternative perspective, the film has been critiqued for "laying bare the racialised fantasy of the American dream and Hollywood narrative aesthetics" and for depicting the Persian shopkeeper as a "deranged, paranoid individual who is only redeemed by what he believes is a mystical act of God". The film has also been criticised for using multicultural and sentimental imagery to cover over material and "historically sedimented inequalities" that continue to affect different racial groups in Los Angeles.

Box office

Crash opened in wide release on May 6, 2005, and was a box-office success in the late spring of 2005. The film had a budget of $6.5 million (plus $1 million in financing). Because of the financial constraints, director Haggis filmed in his own house, borrowed a set from the TV show Monk, used his car in parts of the film, and even used cars from other staff members. It grossed $53.4 million domestically, making back more than seven times its budget. Despite its success in relation to its cost, Crash was the least grossing film, at the domestic box office, to win Best Picture since The Last Emperor in 1987.

Awards

Best Picture Oscar

In 2006, Crash controversially won the Best Picture Oscar over the critically-favored Brokeback Mountain, making it the second film ever (the other being The Sting) to win the Academy Award for Best Picture without even being nominated for either of the three Golden Globe Awards for Best Motion Picture (Best Drama, Best Comedy/Musical and Best Foreign Film).

Critic Kenneth Turan suggested that Crash benefited from anti-homosexual discomfort among Academy members while critic Roger Ebert was on a different opinion citing the better film won that year. He went on to question why many critics weren't mentioning the other nominees and that they were just mindlessly bashing Crash just because it won over Brokeback Mountain. Ebert also placed Crash on his best ten list as number one best film of 2005 and also correctly predicted it to win best picture. Mark Sells of The Reel Deal also selected the film as the Top of 2005, adding that it "dares to go where few films have gone before, openly flirting between lines of race, color, and ethnicity. Powerful and provocative, Crash is a masterful morality tale with a lot of guts."

Crash was nominated for six awards in the 78th Academy Awards (2006), and won three of them, including a win for Best Picture. It was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards: one for Best Supporting Actor (Matt Dillon) and the other for Best Screenplay (Paul Haggis and Robert Moresco).

Other awards include Best Ensemble Cast at the 2005 Screen Actors Guild Awards; Best Original Screenplay at the Writers Guild of America Awards 2005; Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress (Newton) at the BAFTA Awards; Best Writer at the Critics' Choice Awards; Outstanding Motion Picture and Outstanding Actor in a Leading Role (Howard) at the Black Movie Awards; Best First Feature and Best Supporting Male (Dillon) at the Independent Spirit Awards; Best Acting Ensemble and Best Writer at the Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards; and Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture (Howard) and Outstanding Motion Picture at the NAACP Image Awards.

Original score

All songs written and composed by Mark Isham, except where noted. The original score was released through labels Gut and Colosseum in 2005.

There is as well a "Crash - Music from and inspired by the film" release.

Home media

Crash was released on DVD on September 6, 2005 as widescreen and fullscreen one-disc versions, with a number of bonus features, including a music video by KansasCali (now known as The Rocturnals) for the song "If I..." off of the "Inspired by Soundtrack to Crash". The director's cut of the film was released in a 2-disc special edition DVD on April 4, 2006, with more bonus content than the one-disc set. The director's cut is three minutes longer than the theatrical cut. The scene where Daniel is talking with his daughter under her bed is extended and a new scene is added with Officer Hanson in the police station locker room.

The film also was released in a limited-edition VHS version. It was the last Academy Award (Best Picture) winning film to be released in the VHS-tape format. It was also the first Best Picture winner to be released on Blu-ray Disc in the U.S., on June 27, 2006.

Crash is also currently #1 in the list of Netflix Top 100, a list compiled of films most frequently rented on Netflix.com.

Television series

A 13-episode series premiered on the Starz network on October 17, 2008. The series features Dennis Hopper as a record producer in Los Angeles, California, and how his life is connected to other characters in the city, including a police officer (Ross McCall) and his partner, actress-turned-police officer, Arlene Tur. The cast consists of a Brentwood mother (Clare Carey), her real-estate developer husband (D. B. Sweeney), former gang member-turned-EMT (Brian Tee), a street-smart driver (Jocko Sims), an undocumented Guatemalan immigrant (Luis Chavez), and a detective (Nick Tarabay).

References

1. Crash DVD Commentary Track. 2005.
2. "Crash Movie Reviews, Pictures". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2010-04-30.
3. "Crash reviews at". Metacritic.com. Retrieved 2010-04-30.
4. "Crash :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews". Rogerebert.suntimes.com. Retrieved 2010-04-30.
5. "Empire Features". Empireonline.com. Retrieved 2010-04-30.
6. ""Crash" ultimately upholds stereotypes about Asian-Americans". Mixedmediawatch.com. 1999-02-22. Retrieved 2010-04-30.
7. "darkmatter » Crash and the City". Darkmatter101.org. 2007-05-07. Retrieved 2010-04-30.
8. "Film Criticism Current Issue". Filmcriticism.allegheny.edu. Retrieved 2010-04-30.
9. Turan, Kenneth (March 5, 2006). "Breaking no ground: Why Crash won, why Brokeback lost and how the academy chose to play it safe". The Los Angeles Times.
10. "Maybe Crash's upset at the Oscars shouldn't have been such a surprise?". The Los Angeles Times. April 16, 2009.
11. "The fury of the 'Crash'-lash". Chicago Sun-Times.
12. http://moviecitynews.com/2006/02/on-ebert-crash/
13. Sells, Mark. "Crash: Review". The Reel Deal.
14. "historical Blu-ray Release Dates". Bluray.highdefdigest.com. Retrieved 2010-04-30.
15. "Netflix Top 100". Netflix. Retrieved 2010-12-13.
16. "Crash: A Starz Original Series". Starz.com. Retrieved 2010-04-30.

External links

• Official website
• Crash at IMDb
• Template:Amg movie
• Crash at Box Office Mojo
• Crash at Rotten Tomatoes

• 2004 films
• 2005 films
• 2000s drama films
• American crime drama films
• English-language films
• Spanish-language films
• Persian-language films
• Mandarin-language films
• Korean-language films
• Best Picture Academy Award winners
• Films whose writer won the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award
• Films whose editor won the Best Film Editing Academy Award
• Films set in Los Angeles, California
• Films set in the San Fernando Valley
• Films shot in Los Angeles, California
• Gang films
• Race-related films
• Lions Gate films
• Fictional portrayals of the Los Angeles Police Department