Plot
Los Angeles citizens with vastly separate lives collide in interweaving stories of race, loss and redemption.
Release Year: 2004
Rating: 8.0/10 (219,296 voted)
Critic's Score: 69/100
Director:
Paul Haggis
Stars: Don Cheadle, Sandra Bullock, Thandie Newton
Storyline Over a thirty-six hour period in Los Angeles, a handful of disparate people's lives intertwine as they deal with the tense race relations that belie life in the city. Among the players are: the Caucasian district attorney, who uses race as a political card; his Caucasian wife, who, having recently been carjacked by two black men, believes that her stereotypical views of non-whites is justified and cannot be considered racism; the two black carjackers who use their race both to their advantage and as an excuse; partnered Caucasian police constables, one who is a racist and uses his authority to harass non-whites, and the other who hates his partner because of those racist views, but who may have the same underlying values in his subconscious; a black film director and his black wife, who believes her husband doesn't support their black background enough, especially in light of an incident with the racist white cop; partnered police detectives and sometimes lovers...
Writers: Paul Haggis, Paul Haggis
Cast: Karina Arroyave
-
Elizabeth
Dato Bakhtadze
-
Lucien
Sandra Bullock
-
Jean Cabot
Don Cheadle
-
Det. Graham Waters
Art Chudabala
-
Ken Ho
Sean Cory
-
Motorcycle Cop
Tony Danza
-
Fred
Keith David
-
Lt. Dixon
Loretta Devine
-
Shaniqua Johnson
Matt Dillon
-
Officer John Ryan
Jennifer Esposito
-
Ria
Ime Etuk
-
Georgie
(as Ime N. Etuk)
Eddie J. Fernandez
-
Officer Gomez
(as Eddie Fernandez)
William Fichtner
-
Flanagan
Howard Fong
-
Store Owner
Filming Locations: 3500 S. Gaffey Street, San Pedro, Los Angeles, California, USA
Box Office Details
Budget: $6,500,000
(estimated)
Opening Weekend: MXN 2,088,663
(Mexico)
(25 April 2005)
(60 Screens)
Gross: $98,410,061
(Worldwide)
(12 July 2006)
Technical Specs
Runtime:|
(director's cut)
Did You Know?
Trivia:
The movie was shot in 36 days.
Goofs:
Crew or equipment visible:
When Daniel comes in to speak with Farhad after fixing his lock, two members of the production crew can be seen attempting to hide behind one of the store shelves in the bottom-left corner of the frame.
Quotes:
[first lines]
Graham:
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.
User Review
Review: Ensemble cast delivers top-notch performances in reflective drama
Rating: 10/10
In a drama strikingly reminiscent in style and tone of P.T. Anderson's
film Magnolia (1999), the narrative in Crash shifts between 5 or 6
different groups of seemingly unconnected characters, whose
relationships to each other are only revealed in the end.
Not to be confused with the David Cronenberg feature of the same name,
this Crash is the feature-length, studio-released directorial debut of
veteran Canadian TV writer/producer/director and two-time Emmy-winner
Paul Haggis. An in-depth exploration on the themes of racism and
prejudice, cause and effect, chance and coincidence, and tragedy,
"crash" is a metaphor for the collisions between strangers in the
course of day-to-day existence. Set over a 24-hour period in
contemporary L.A., it is a social commentary on the interconnectedness
of life in the big city.
Crash features a top-notch ensemble cast which includes: Sandra
Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Jennifer Esposito, Brendan Fraser,
Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Loretta Devine, Thandie Newton, Ryan Phillipe
and Larenz Tate. All put in superb performances in a tight script which
is at once gritty, heartwarming, shocking, tragic and witty, and which
will ring true with viewers of all demographics.
Centering around two disturbing car accidents, a carjacking, vicious
workplace vandalism, and the suspicious shooting death of one police
officer by another, the drama is set against the backdrop of a racist
LAPD and Los Angeles justice system. Action shifts between the various
characters, whose lives collide with each other in unpredictable ways
as each faces their own moral dilemma, and tries to cope with the
consequences of their resulting decision made or action taken. Each of
the dozen or so main characters undergoes some type of a personal
metamorphosis as the various story lines head toward a striking, common
conclusion, which succeeds at being both cathartic and unsettling.
Crash is backed by a solid and varied, original soundtrack and
excellent cinematography. Sweeping, wider shots alternate with
disjointed camera angles which convey the chaos and confusion of the
characters and the unpredictability of life. Occasional lingering
close-ups -- on occasion without sound -- capture the actors' facial
expressions, which suitably detail key moments of the characters'
aching pain, fear, anger, bitter anguish, remorse or grief, far better
than any dialogue could.
This breathtaking film is destined to be a critical smash and
box-office hit. Five stars.
Plot
After getting into a serious car accident, a TV director discovers an underground sub-culture of scarred, omnisexual car-crash victims who use car accidents and the raw sexual energy they produce to try to rejuvenate his sex life with his wife.
Release Year: 1996
Rating: 6.2/10 (25,576 voted)
Critic's Score: 47/100
Director:
David Cronenberg
Stars: James Spader, Holly Hunter, Elias Koteas
Storyline Since a road accident left him with serious facial and bodily scarring, a former TV scientist has become obsessed by the marriage of motor-car technology with what he sees as the raw sexuality of car-crash victims. The scientist, along with a crash victim he has recently befriended, sets about performing a series of sexual acts in a variety of motor vehicles, either with other crash victims or with prostitutes whom they contort into the shape of trapped corpses. Ultimately, the scientist craves a suicidal union of blood, semen, and engine coolant, a union with which he becomes dangerously obsessed.
Writers: J.G. Ballard, David Cronenberg
Cast: James Spader
-
James Ballard
Holly Hunter
-
Helen Remington
Elias Koteas
-
Vaughan
Deborah Kara Unger
-
Catherine Ballard
Rosanna Arquette
-
Gabrielle
Peter MacNeill
-
Colin Seagrave
Yolande Julian
-
Airport Hooker
Cheryl Swarts
-
Vera Seagrave
Judah Katz
-
Salesman
Nicky Guadagni
-
Tattooist
Ronn Sarosiak
-
A.D.
Boyd Banks
-
Grip
Markus Parilo
-
Man in Hanger
Alice Poon
-
Camera Girl
John Stoneham Jr.
-
Trask
Filming Locations: North York, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Box Office Details
Budget: $9,000,000
(estimated)
Opening Weekend: $738,779
(USA)
(23 March 1997)
(339 Screens)
Gross: $3,168,660
(USA)
(20 April 1997)
Technical Specs
Runtime:|
(R-rated version)
Did You Know?
Trivia: Holly Hunter got a part in the film because she had been lobbying David Cronenberg for the opportunity to work with him for years.
Goofs:
Continuity:
After Vaughan repeatedly crashes the left front bumper of his Lincoln into a junker James Ballard is sitting in, causing major damage to the bumper and the lights, Vaughan is soon shown driving on the highway with no damage to the bumper and both left lights operational.
Quotes: Vaughan:
[talking into microphone as he walks around the car]
Don't worry. That guy's gotta see us. Don't worry. That guy's gotta see us... These were the confident last words of the brilliant, young Hollywood star James Dean as he piloted his Porsche 550 Spyder race car toward a date with death along a lonely stretch of California two-lane blacktop Route 466...
User Review
An anti-erotic exploration of the hollowness of modern life
Rating: 10/10
Crash is a very sexually explicit film, but if you buy or rent this movie
expecting it to be an evening's erotic entertainment, you are going to be
disappointed, because it is also an anti-erotic film.
Even in the midst of frenzied lovemaking, the characters remain distant,
their voices quiet and abstracted, their gazes directed inward. These are
people who have been told all their lives by their culture, by TV and
movies, that sex is, on the one hand, the most perfect form of communion
and
connection with another human being; and, on the other hand, that it is the
ultimate in transcendent and transformative experiences. Instead, they
discover to their horror that even during sex they still feel nothing.
They
crave connection, they are starved for a glimpse of transcendence, but no
matter what they do, no matter who they do it with or how often, while
their
bodies may feel passion, their minds and hearts remain cold and empty.
In the more recent movie Pleasantville, the Jennifer/Mary Sue character is
unable to feel anything either, and remains stubbornly black and white no
matter how much sex she has, until her brother suggests that "maybe it
isn't
the sex" that is the key to moving from black and white to color, from
passionlessness to feeling. Unfortunately, in Crash, there is no one to
suggest to David and Catherine Ballard that maybe it isn't through sex that
they will find the transformation and connection they are craving. So they
instead seek more and more extreme forms of sexual stimulation, only to be
disappointed again and again.
James is hurt in a car crash, and during his stay in the hospital he meets
Helen (who was in the other car) and later Vaughan, a man who like James
and
Catherine is in desperate search of feeling, only he looks for it in the
violence of car crashes. With Helen, at first James, then Catherine too is
drawn into Vaughan's world, where sex and death (eros and thanatos for you
Freudians) meet in the twisted metal of wrecked cars and the mutilated
bodies of the victims of fatal car crashes and the survivors of near-fatal
ones.
They attend staged recreations of famous car crashes, like the one that
killed James Dean. They have sex in crashed cars, and start touring crash
sites on the freeway as a form of foreplay. They begin to watch films of
crash tests and fatal race accidents like other people would watch erotic
films, and to have sex with people whose bodies have been mutilated by car
crashes.
But not even the horror of mutilation or the adrenaline rush of near-death
experience can lend James and Catherine's desperate coupling the depth of
feeling that they so desperately crave.
Like all the people who buy expensive automobiles to give them a feeling of
power and independence, only to discover that no matter how snazzy their
car
is, they still feel powerless and unhappy, James and Catherine have bought
into one of our culture's Big Lies, that sex is the answer. This film
shows
us that it is not.
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