Crash into me
There’s nothing like a good bottle of wine and an excellent movie to help you gain a little perspective on life. One such movie is Crash and the current wine of choice is Pinot Grigio. While I have seen this style of movie before, a series of what seem like random events which ties up into a neat little bow of everything in life is related in movies like Traffic, and 21 Grams; Paul Higgis has done a splendid job in creating a pantheon of characters.
In case you don’t know Higgis is the one, who’s entertained us with the movie Million Dollar Baby, and wrote many episodes of the following series: Due South, Walker Texas Ranger, and thirtysomething.
The characters aren’t all simply at an accident at the same time. They are the HMO workers for the father of the policeman responding to an accident, or the brother who has been the guardian angel who fails because he can’t save you from yourself. It’s sad, and poignant, and inspiring all at the same time. It’s not often you get a tumult of emotions in a movie like this. They roll over you like waves, anger at one character, sympathetic to another and then suddenly the roles reverse and you are sympathetic where you were angry at and vice versa.
The tagline for the movie is “You think you know who you are. You have no idea”, an exchange between two police officers player by Matt Dillon and Ryan Phillipe. While this dialog is constructed from a tense educational moment from a veteran police officer to a rookie it’s exchangeable with every single character in the movie.
A word of warning though, this movie openly discusses racism, classism and the conditions for fostering these flawed philosophies. If see this type dialog on screen upsets you, then this is not the movie for you. But, if you enjoy movies where you and your friends can discuss characters and everything is not readily apparent this is a good movie for you. I hope yhou enjoy it as much as I did.
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