Movie Star Blog

I had trouble with the racism plot in Crash, too.

Crash is the kind of movie that deals with a very well documented topic, and it can’t be easy to make a movie that is 100% about racism and have it ring true throughout. But Crash almost never rings true. Ludacris plays a carjacker who makes a 180 degree turn in his life after one of the people he carjacks (Terrence Howard) has a meltdown and almost causes a police shootout. Howard’s character’s wife intersects twice in 2 days with a racist cop played by Matt Dillon, each time with starkly different results. Brendan Fraser and Sandra Bullock play the LA District Attorney and his wife, respectively. They are carjacked by Ludacris, which allows Bullock to rear her ugly racist head (directed at her Hispanic housekeeper and the man who is changing her locks, also a Hispanic). By the end of her movie (remember this all happens in 36 hours), Bullock has seen the errors of her ways and loves all Hispanics. That same locksmith turns out to be quite a family man, but his life is almost ruined by an Iranian whose store is victimized by racists. Ryan Philippe plays a cop who can’t put up with Matt Dillon’s racist ways anymore, but engages in the most inexplicable racial act in the whole movie. Got a headache? Me too.