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Crash is a 2005 American/German drama film, written, produced, and directed by Paul Haggis. It premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2004, and was released internationally in 2005. The film is about racial and social tensions in Los Angeles. A self-described "passion piece" for director Paul Haggis, Crash was inspired by a real life incident in which his Porsche was carjacked outside a video store on Wilshire Boulevard in 1991.
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Quotations
Category:Drama films Category:2004 films
Cameron: to Anthony Look at me. You embarrass me. You embarrass yourself.
Christine: I just couldn't stand see that man take away your dignity.
Dorri: Listen. You can give me the gun, or give me back the money, and I'm really hoping for the money.
Jean: I am angry all the time... and I don't know why.
Fuck you very much. Thanks for thinking of me.
Encyclopedia
Crash is a 2005 American/German drama film, written, produced, and directed by Paul Haggis. It premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2004, and was released internationally in 2005. The film is about racial and social tensions in Los Angeles. A self-described "passion piece" for director Paul 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.
Plot
- See also the Characters section below
The film depicts several characters living in Los Angeles, California during a 36-hour period and brings them together through car collisions, shootings, and carjacking. Through these characters' interactions, the film seeks to depict and examine not only racial tension, but also the distance between strangers in general.
Characters
Rick Cabot (Brendan Fraser) is the white District Attorney of Los Angeles who manipulates racial politics in order to further his career. He and his wife Jean are carjacked by Anthony and Peter, both of whom are black. Fearing a loss of support in the black community as the election approaches, Rick arranges for his assistant to blackmail Detective Graham Waters, who is black, into testifying against a white cop whom Graham thinks is innocent in order to create a press event which will reassure voters of Cabot's racial sensitivity.
Jean Cabot (Sandra Bullock) is Rick's wife, whose racial prejudices escalate after the carjacking. At the end of the film, following an accident in her home, she realizes that the person who is the kindest and most helpful to her is María, her Hispanic maid, while her snobby friends are too busy with shallow pursuits to help her out. She realizes, and informs María, that she is her best friend.
Anthony (Chris "Ludacris" Bridges) is an African American inner-city car thief who steals vehicles for a chop shop owner. He believes that society is unfairly biased against blacks, and at one point in the film he justifies his actions by claiming he would never hurt another black person. However, Anthony tells Peter to shoot a black man, Cameron, after they try to carjack his car and he fights back. A disgusted Cameron kicks Anthony out of his car and says "You embarrass me. You embarrass yourself." Towards the end of the movie, Anthony steals a van which - unknown to him at the time - was full of trafficked people from South East Asia. He refers to these immigrants disparagingly as Chinamen, but when the owner of the chop shop offers him $500 per head for the immigrants with the intention of selling them on, Anthony refuses. Instead, he lets them out onto the Asian district of LA in the closing scenes of the movie. Anthony gives them all of the money that is in his pocket – $40.
Peter Waters (Larenz Tate) is Anthony's friend and partner in crime. He is also Detective Waters' younger brother. Like Anthony, he is black, but he humorously scoffs at Anthony's paranoia over racism. He also likes the Los Angeles Kings hockey team. Peter is shot to death by Officer Hansen, who picks him up in the Valley, hours after their failed carjacking of Cameron's Lincoln Navigator and mistakenly shoots him after assuming he is drawing a gun during an escalating argument. In reality he was reaching into his pocket to show the cop a figure of Saint Christopher, identical to the one Officer Hansen had stuck to his dashboard. As he is dying, he has a expression of shock/surprise and holds out his hand and dies.
Graham Waters (Don Cheadle) is an African-American detective in the Los Angeles Police Department. He is disconnected from his poor family, which consists of his drug-addicted mother and criminal younger brother. He promises his mother that he will find his younger brother, but he is preoccupied with a case concerning a suspected racist white cop who shot a corrupt black cop. Flanagan (William Fichtner), an assistant to the district attorney, offers Graham the chance to further his career in exchange for withholding evidence that could possibly have helped the white cop's case. Flanagan also tries to convince Graham that the black community needs to see the black cop as a hero, and not as a drug dealer, as Graham suspects that he may have been. Graham is both offended and opposed, and is ready to storm out, when Flanagan mentions that there is a warrant out for Graham's brother's arrest, and that this is his third felony, which carries a life sentence in the state of California. Graham makes a very difficult personal decision to withhold evidence and possibly corrupt a case in order to have the District Attorney forget about his brother. That brother is eventually revealed to be Peter, the hitchhiker who is killed by Officer Hansen.
Ria (Jennifer Esposito) is a Latina detective, as well as Graham's partner and girlfriend. When a phone call from Graham's mother interrupts his sexual romp with Ria, she becomes upset with Graham for being disrespectful towards his mother and subsequently showing himself to be racially insensitive towards Hispanics. She is shown to be racist toward Asians, as she criticizes an Asian woman's driving.
Officer Tommy Hansen (Ryan Phillipe) is a Los Angeles police officer who, after observing his partner Officer John Ryan pull over Cameron Thayer and Christine Thayer and sexually molest Christine, requests a change of partner because of feelings of guilt over the incident. His supervisor, Lieutenant Dixon, tells him he will transfer him if he claims his "uncontrollable flatulence" requires him to drive a one man car. The next day, after he presumably files the request, he is reassigned to a single man patrol car. While on patrol he joins a police chase of Cameron Thayer, who was being car jacked, but fought off his carjackers and is fleeing the scene with one carjacker still in the car. After driving into a dead end Cameron, now resentful of the LAPD, confronts the police officers. Tommy jumps in front of Cameron and tries to convince him to stand down to avoid a confrontation which could possibly result in Cameron's death. He then vouches for Cameron, stating that he is a friend of his, and asks the officers to let Cameron off with a "harsh warning," which they do. Tommy is later seen driving in his car when he picks up Peter Waters, who is hitch-hiking. He ultimately reveals his own insecurities with other races (African-Americans in particular) through his treatment of Peter Waters and how he quickly dismisses Waters' attempts to compare similarities between them. He pulls over when he assumes that Peter is laughing at him, and tells him to get out of the car. As Peter reaches into his pocket, Tommy wrongly assumes that Peter is reaching for a hidden gun, and shoots him dead. He removes the dead Peter from the car to cover up the incident. We later see Peter, who is revealed to be the brother of Det. Waters, dead in the grass near where Tommy pulled over. Finally, we see Tommy walking away from his burning car wearing a pair of latex gloves, trying to conceal his involvement in the shooting.
Officer John Ryan (Matt Dillon) is a bigoted white police officer who physically molests Cameron's wife, Christine, under the pretense of searching for a weapon after pulling over their vehicle and accusing them of endangerment due to Christine performing fellatio on Cameron while he was driving. Meanwhile, Ryan is trying to get help for his father, who possibly suffers from prostate cancer but has been diagnosed with a bladder infection, despite the ineffectiveness of treatment. His anger manifests in prejudice, as is evident when he exhibits a racist attitude towards an HMO employee preventing his father from seeing an out of network, non-HMO physician. His racial prejudices seem to stem from the destructive impact that local affirmative action policies had on his father's business. After Hansen requests solo patrol, Ryan is partnered with a Hispanic-American with whom he seems to get along. Ryan later puts his own life on the line to save Christine, the woman he molested earlier, from certain death in a fiery car wreck.
Lieutenant Dixon (Keith David) is Officers Ryan and Hansen's shift Lieutenant. An African American, Dixon believes that the LAPD is a racist organization that he personally had to work extra hard in to earn a ranking position. When Hansen requests to change partners, Dixon refuses stating that doing so because of Officer Ryan's racism will reflect poorly on their unit. He claims that going on record about supervising racist officers such as Ryan can be a move that will cost both Hansen and Dixon their jobs. In order to get away from Officer Ryan, he then suggests that Officer Hansen ride in a solo car claiming to have a condition of "uncontrollable flatulence."
Cameron Thayer (Terrence Howard) is a black television director. He witnesses Officer Ryan molesting his wife and later realises that the producers of his television show propagate racist stereotypes about black people. In an emotional moment, he fights off Anthony and Peter when they try to steal his car, takes away Anthony's gun, and argues fiercely with armed white police officers. Just when it is very likely that he will be shot to death, Hansen intervenes on his behalf and prevents any outbreak of violence.
Christine Thayer (Thandie Newton) is Cameron's wife. She is molested by Ryan after when she and Cameron are pulled over for her giving oral sex to her husband while he was driving them home. She becomes furious with her husband because he does not act to defend her. The two insult each other over their upbringings – as both Cameron and Christine have grown up in more privileged environments than many other African Americans. The next day she is trapped in an overturned car due to a car accident and, by a twist of fate, Officer Ryan is the man who willingly endangers himself to save her life.
Daniel Ruiz (Michael Peña) is a Mexican-American locksmith who faces discrimination from Jean and others because he looks like a gangbanger to them, when he is actually a devoted family man. After Anthony and Peter steal Jean and Rick's car, Daniel comes over and changes the locks on their home. Daniel seeks a safe environment for his young daughter, Lara, who had a bullet go through her window in their previous home. That is why he moved to a safer neighborhood and enrolled her in a private school. Near the beginning he gives Lara an invisible "cloak" that he says will protect her should someone try to shoot at her. Farhad shoots at Lara and Daniel but they escape unhurt, because the gun contains blanks chosen by Dorri earlier in the film. However Lara believes that this is due to the protective powers of the "cloak."
Farhad (Shaun Toub) is a Persian store owner who is afraid for his safety. He is depicted as frustrated by the racial harassment he experiences in the United States (despite being an American citizen), as well as deterred by difficulties with speaking English. To protect his store - the only thing his family has - he goes to a gun shop and attempts to buy a gun. The gun store owner quickly becomes frustrated with Farhad's conversation with his daughter Dorri in Persian, leading to harassment from the owner, who believes that Persians are Arabs and therefore, terrorists, one of these comments being "Yo, Osama, plan the jihad on your own time." The owner refuses to sell Farhad a gun, but finally sells the gun to Farhad's daughter after being cryptic and lecherous about which bullets she needs.
The store run by Farhad and his wife Shereen (Marina Sirtis) has a door which will not close properly, so they call a locksmith, Daniel. Farhad's suspicion of others is compounded by his difficulty understanding English; he does not heed Daniel's warning that his shop door needs replacing, believing Daniel intends to cheat him, and as a result suffers a break-in. Shereen reacts to the slurs written on the walls of the store: "They think we're Arab. When did Persian become Arab?" Blaming Daniel for the invasion and racially-motivated destruction of his store, and angered by the insurance company rejecting his claim on the grounds of negligence, he confronts Daniel at his house, wielding his gun. Farhad fires at Daniel but accidentally shoots Daniel's daughter Lara, to the horror of both Daniel and Farhad. Fortunately, unknowingly to Farhad, the gun contains blanks. Farhad leaves without further incident, later telling his daughter that his "fereshteh," his guardian angel, protected himself and his family.
Dorri (Bahar Soomekh) is Farhad's daughter, and is more acclimated than her father to American culture. She is constantly trying to calm her father down during his emotional outbursts. She is also an employee at the hospital; she escorts Graham and his mother to Peter's body after it is discovered in a field.
Jake Flanagan (William Fichtner) is an aide to Rick who tries to talk Graham into accepting a corrupt deal. He holds a complex viewpoint that is not blatantly racist, yet he makes bigoted remarks in a conversation with Detective Waters. He argues that the black community needs to see a deceased black cop as a hero, even if he was corrupt. It appears that Flanagan is interested in the political aspects of the case as the DA's office will look better in the eyes of the black community for convicting an officer who has a troubled racial history of a crime that he is partially guilty of. When Graham refuses to play, even if offered a promotion in exchange, Flanagan subtly mentions that Graham's brother has had a warrant issued for his arrest, and that perhaps this was a mistake. Flanagan implies that if Graham will do what the District Attorney wants, the case against his brother could be buried. Graham appears to accept the deal.
Shaniqua Johnson (Loretta Devine) is the HMO representative for the insurance company used by Officer Ryan's father. At the end of the film, her car collides with another and she begins to yell at the other driver about "speaking American."
Choi Jin Gui is a korean man who gets run over by Anthony and Peter. He had bought illegal immigrants at a cafe where Officer Ryan and Shaniqua was having a phone call conversation, to which Anthony finds out near the end of the film and release the illegal immigrants free.
Wife of Choi Jin Gui, who goes to the hospital to see him and gets told to cash the cheque he had straight away. Kim Lee at the start of the film is involved in a car crash with Graham's car and has a row with Ria who was in the car with Graham.
Lucien (Dato Bakhtadze) runs a chop shop in which Anthony and Peter try to sell cars. The two thieves first try to sell him the Lincoln Navigator they stole from the Cabots, but he refuses to accept it because they ran over a Korean man and he believes the crime will be traced back to him. This suggests that the various other characters who had committed crimes could be caught, although this is never confirmed. He is later shown to have his own racist beliefs when Anthony arrives with a van (belonging to the man that he and Peter ran over) full of Asian illegal immigrants. Lucien tries to buy the immigrants as workers, claiming they can be sold for an easy profit.
Critical reception
The film received generally positive reviews with the review tallying website rottentomatoes.com reporting that 143 out of the 190 reviews they tallied were positive for a score of 75 percent and a certification of "fresh", while metacritic tallied an average score of 69 out of 100 for Crashs critical consensus. Roger Ebert gave the film four 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 Iranian 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 critiqued 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.
Best Picture Oscar
Crash won the Best Picture Oscar for 2005, beating, among others, Brokeback Mountain. Many Brokeback supporters (including its Pulitzer Prize-winning author E. Annie Proulx) criticized the decision, referring to Crash as a "hometown movie", although other film critics, such as Roger Ebert, dismissed these arguments.
Awards
Crash was nominated for six awards in the 78th Academy Awards (2005), 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.
DVD
Crash was released on DVD on September 6, 2005 as widescreen and fullscreen one-disc versions, with a handful of bonus features that includes 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 which includes the music video for Bird York and her Academy nominated song "In The Deep". The director's cut is 3 minutes longer than the theatrical cut. The differences are the scene where Daniel is talking with his daughter under her bed is extended, and there is a new scene added with Officer Hanson in the police station locker room. The film also was released in a limited-edition VHS version, as films in the VHS videotape format were all but being phased out by this time, thus restricting future film releases for home video release only in the DVD format starting in 2006. It was also the last Oscar winner for Best Picture to be released in the VHS tape format.
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 played by 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), illegal Guatemalan immigrant (Luis Chavez), and a detective (Nick Tarabay).
External links
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