Saw Crash yesterday. Hardly a moment passed that I didn't want to flee the theatre.

Films/DVD Asylum

Movies from comedy to drama to your favorite Hollyweird Star.

And the afternoon had begun so well! Parking at Boston's back bay Fenway Theatre is usually a breeze when one has the necessary native clue, but there was a Red Sox game on at Fenway Park, three blocks distant, which makes for exciting urban life but a shortage of parking. Automatically I turned around and headed for home, and there right beside me a car pulled out. In like Flint!
And I found an excellent center seat in the theatre's second-largest (52 ft. screen) stadium house -- there to sit disgusted by the blatant contrivances of this dreadful film. The writer/director makes you know he has some Terribly Important things to say and the lecture, the harangue never lets up. Just one instance of how this all misfires: The "racist" cop Ryan (Isn't it racist as well to use an Irish name here?) upbraids a black underling for her pissy, bureaucratic response to his father's medical predicament, and eventually he uses racial terms, but really, isn't he just rather undeft in handling underlings?
The Boston Globe, normally counted upon to supply a sensitive, liberal response to any perceived "racism", said it best -- and I recommend the whole review:
Well-acted 'Crash' is a course in stock characters
By Ty Burr
Boston Globe
Published: 11/30/1999
There will be people who will think ''Crash" is the most important film they have seen in years, and good for them. Whatever makes sense of this vale of tears through which we travel in air-conditioned isolation at 75 miles per hour.
Permit others to be less convinced. ''Crash" is one of those multi-character, something-is-rotten-in-Los Angeles barnburners that grab you by the lapels and try desperately to shake you up...

But its characters come straight from the assembly line of screenwriting archetypes, and too often they act in ways that archetypes, rather than human beings, do. You can feel its creator shuttling them here and there on the grid of greater LA, pausing portentously between each move.
Since that creator is director Paul Haggis, a longtime TV writer who grabbed the gold ring last year by writing the script for Clint Eastwood's ''Million Dollar Baby," I guess he's earned the right to make a big statement. But, boy, does he want you to know it.

http://www.boston.com/movies/display?display=movie&id=7408 (Open in New Window)

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Topic - Saw Crash yesterday. Hardly a moment passed that I didn't want to flee the theatre. - clarkjohnsen 08:06:03 05/09/05 (3)

A lot of what you described is how I felt about Hotel Rwanda. * - mr grits 12:13:02 05/09/05 (2)

I have no doubt! nt - clarkjohnsen 07:10:38 05/10/05 (0)

Perhaps there is a difference in the subject matter? - tinear 12:52:53 05/09/05 (0)

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