Crash (2004)

Synopsis: Several characters interact in Los Angeles. They are: a black cop, his hispanic girlfriend-partner, a white cop who lives with his ill father, his white rookie partner, a black TV director and his black wife, an Iranian shop owner, his daughter, his wife, a Mexican lock installer, his little daughter, a white District Attorney and his white wife, their hispanic maid, the district attorney's assistant, two black robbers, a Korean woman and her father, a black Medical Plan attendant. 

Appraisal: This film tries to illustrate how racism develops in a multiethnical city. Being basically a thesis oriented film, it has a "functional" screenplay. By that I mean that there is no spontaneous moment and no sense of humor. Everything is there with a purpose. So the people that called it contrived were absolutely right. Some situations are very implausible and are there only to illustrate the main theme of racism and intolerance. That maims the film, that becomes, at best, solemn and didactic, and, at worst, outright ridiculous, which happens at one or two points. 

Now a curiosity. The first line, about how people who do not touch will collide in order to make contact, is somewhat similar in idea to this line of a short story that was first published in 1959: 

"(...) All of us, there, felt as at the edge of the world, ferociously isolated, with habits, desires and hopes that almost always required the pretext of a collision to keep them alive, hating, at times, these fellows seen at all hours, under the same phrases, the same gestures. Imprisoned, our emotions had to explode, before they rotted." 

The author is Fernando Namora, and the short story is called, in Portuguese, "Sabotagem", which translates to "Sabotage"; it is part of the collection "Cidade Solitária" ("Lonely City"); the translation is my own. Oh, and the short story is set in a mine, not in a city. 

Rating: 45