<p>I saw the movie Crash the other night, and I have to say it’s definately on my list of favorite movies now. I thought it was absolutely great. Here’s the IMDB of it if anyone wants to check it out. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0375679/[/url]”>http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0375679/</a></p>
<p>I love that movie, too. One of my favorites.</p>
<p>meh. i just saw it. it seemed a little too far-fetched. racism is bad but not EVERYTHING is attributable to race. (ludacris/chris bridges especially … a bus has large windows because of racism against blacks??)
i live in the south and it’s really not that bad here. and the movie is filmed in l.a.
i’ve never been to l.a. so i really can’t say anything but it seemed everything happened too coincidentally . . and l.a is a big city, i just didnt think it was really possible to happen in life. (what are the odds that 2 black car jackers who ran over a “chinaman” would affect so many different people? i.e. the black director, the white policeman (ryan phillipe), the korean wife, the poor thai families, the black old lady … i mean come on</p>
<p>my favorite part though was the hispanic family … they were so innocent but dragged into several racist-induced bad scenarios … and i can really see that happening</p>
<p>Oh and the language was kinda harsh, it seemed as if every other word was the F bomb … i know society is mostly like that today but geez i’m not used to hearing it dropped that many times …</p>
<p>I liked it- but I thought some of the characters were too broadly drawn
Would a woman in 2005 really give her husband so much grief over not “protecting” her from a man ( albeit a cop) with a gun?
can’t we have a movie with more subtle characterizations for once?
I love Don Cheadle though- he has been one of my favorite actors since Picket fences- and Matt Dillon has the strongest performance in the whole film.</p>
<p>If you liked Don Cheadle in Crash and Hotel Rwanda- check out Devil in a Blue Dress- he is spot on as Mouse- Denzel Washingtons pyscho buddy from Walter Mosleys novel of the same name.</p>
<p>"Would a woman in 2005 really give her husband so much grief over not “protecting” her from a man ( albeit a cop) with a gun? "</p>
<p>I think some would prefer that their men risk their lives, even die, when their wives were being sexually molested by a cop with a gun than to stand passively by and then cravenly apologize to the cops.</p>
<p>There really are people who believe that it’s better to die on one’s feet than to live on one’s knees.</p>
<p>If that incident had happened to me, I think that my reaction would have been similar to the character’s.</p>
<p>There really are people who believe that it’s better to die on one’s feet than to live on one’s knees.</p>
<p>but if that was the characters motivation- why didn’t she react herself- she was a grown woman- why expect her husband to react for her?-</p>
<p>and then for whatever motivation the husband had for self preservation, afterward the wife just wouldn’t let up on him and badgered him until he had to act out himself. She didn’t want to take responsibilty for her own response but put the blame on her husband- I just would have liked to have seen her be a stronger character and not expect a man to interact for her.</p>
<p>I thought it was one of the best movies this year. I agree with Northstarmom about her take on the molestation scene - I thought it was one of the most powerful scenes in the movie. The husband was torn between his own instinct for how the cop would react if he protested, his traditional role to protect his wife and his instinct to survive. </p>
<p>The movie was powerful because it shows the complexity and reality of racism and how it takes a lifetime to create and more than a lifetime to erase. It was incredibly real and devoid of politically correct crap. The fact that all the characters “crashed” into one another in one way or another didn’t bother me a bit - it was a story device that helped develop the nuance of the characters.</p>
<p>EK,
I think we all think we will react to crisis in a certain way based on our perception of who we think we are. The reality of how we react is a lot more complex with a mix of emotions both conscious and unconscious. </p>
<p>It seems to me that even racism was presented this way - we all have our perception of ourselves and where we fall on the prejudice scale but when presented with a problem or crisis we might react very differently. That message was most evident with the young white cop who was seemingly free of prejudice but when faced with what appeared to be a life and death situation he acted on his prejudice.</p>
<p>I admit I am just really picky when it comes to dramas- if I dont’ beleive the character-
but I know that our responses can surprise us.
When my car was broken into last week- during school- in the high school parking lot- I was furious and shaking- ready to go out and buy a weapon- I just couldnt’ believe it-I was literally gone 5 min, but I had no idea that the parking lot was “watched”.
I had the same reaction a few years ago when I caught a young man actually sitting in my drivers seat going through my cds apparently trying to find a good one ( they were all childrens education software that I was taking to the preschool) If I had, had a gun, I would have popped him one- as it was by the time I got to him- he had gotten into the next car and drove away.</p>
<p>Yikes Emeraldkity!</p>
<p>I jsut saw it and loved it; I think it’s probably the most powerful movie I’ve ever seen. I think the value of a movie lies in its message and the end result: What does it give back to the viewers? </p>
<p>Just because you might not agree with a character’s position or the language they use doesn’t discredit the movie or take away from its overarching theme and message.</p>
<p>A lot of people complain that the movie wasn’t realistic, that the connections between the characters were too coincidental. But how many movies are actually grounded completely in reality? You need to let something go in order to make a good movie. I compared the movie to “Traffic” in which all of the characters were connected. That also had Don Cheadle in it. Personally, my favorite Don Cheadle performances are Devil in a Blue Dress and Rebound (he portrayed Earl “The Goat” Manigault).</p>
<p>And the movie did seem to have an overload of racism but that is what happens when you cram the problems of so many characters into two hours.</p>
<p>There was a mistake in the movie as well that I caught the second time I watched it. The guy who owned the convenience store couldn’t read English (he couldn’t read his insurance contract), but he was able to read the phone book to find the address of the locksmith.</p>
<p>I think it would have been a much stronger movie if it didn’t try to cram so many characters without time to give much history.
I did like it and thats why I was frustrated that it wasn’t better because I could see the potential.</p>
<p>Yeah I figured I’d be in the minority. I just … didn’t like it as much as others.</p>
<p>That movie was sweet. I thought the part where the Arab dude was going to blast away the Spanish dude then the little Spanish girl came running up blocking the “bullet” was the best part in the movie. I watched it with my girlfriend, my buddy and his wife, I thought the girls were going to cry their eyes out and then we saw what happened, it was sweet!</p>
<p>^ I did cry my eyes out, you know, the really ulgy cry, with the tissues flying around…then I saw what happened, and I could breathe again:)</p>
<p>He wasn’t arab
They specifically brought that up, it pained the wife
She was wiping away the spray paint and said to her daughter something like </p>
<p>[daughter] Mom, are you all right?</p>
<p>[father]
Stop washing.
Insurance must take picture.</p>
<p>[mother]
Look what they wrote.
They think we’re Arab.
When did Persian become Arab!?</p>
<p>the whole time they were speaking farsi, not arabic
i know thats not a really important detail, just saying</p>
<p>I understand your point, it would annoy me slightly if someone called an American movie character Canadian or British. :)</p>
<p>" The guy who owned the convenience store couldn’t read English (he couldn’t read his insurance contract), but he was able to read the phone book to find the address of the locksmith."</p>
<p>He could do that if he happened to know the alphabet and matched the man’s name with the letters. He might also have had very limited English reading ability, not enough for understanding insurance contracts, but enough to recognize letters and some words.</p>
<p>" afterward the wife just wouldn’t let up on him and badgered him until he had to act out himself. She didn’t want to take responsibilty for her own response but put the blame on her husband- I just would have liked to have seen her be a stronger character and not expect a man to interact for her."</p>
<p>She still seemed realistic to me. She was with her husband, a big, strong man. She seemed to be like many women: expect a man to physically protect the woman when she’s in danger. That’s the way most people are brought up to expect that the world works.</p>
<p>She also could have been paralyzed with disgust. That happens to rape victims and molestation victims.</p>
<p>Another possibility: She lashed out at him because she was also angry at herself for not being more aggressive against the cop. Sometimes people lash out at others who are doing the same thing that the people themselves have done.</p>