Movie Review
Crash
THAT 'CISM Y'ALL! You scared of it?
by:
Reggie Eggert, for Entertainment
Leave
it to a Canadian filmmaker to have the courage, insight and tact
to pick at America's deepest, painful and slowest healing wound,
THE 'CISM.
With Crash, Oscar winning screenwriter Paul Haggis (Million
Dollar Baby) has given us the most extensive and thought-provoking
film about race since Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing.
It's sad that it has taken more than 15 years for that to happen,
but Americans avoid discussing THE 'CISM until it is absolutely
unavoidable. We are turned off by the idea. It's a hassle. It's
dirty. Moreover, will it even solve anything? Every time I think
of Americans discussing THE 'CISM, I think of Steve Martin in
Parenthood, digging through the grotesque garbage behind
a restaurant in some dark alley, helplessly trying to find his
son's retainer, as his irreparably nutty child and disappointed
wife watch him. It seems pointless, sure. But, he's forced to
try...ya know, for his kid.
Crash forces us to discuss race. Don Cheadle leads a
superb cast that also includes Sandra Bullock, Brendan Fraser,
Matt Dillion, Terrence Howard, Thandi Newton, Ryan Phillippe,
Lorenz Tate and Chris "Ludacris" Bridges. Cheadle plays
Graham, a detective, who is, if not exactly the film's moral center,
the most conscientious character in the film. Graham's burdened
with a junkie mother and hoodlum brother, neither of whom appreciate
him at all, no matter what he does for them. This lack of appreciation
obviously starts to wear on him, because he goes out of his way
to upset his mother by stating, "I gotta go Mom. I've
having sex with a white woman," before he hangs up the
phone on her. And if you didn't know, that statement is very effective
for many a black man who is trying to upset his mother. These
are the little subtleties that make this film so special. Crash
doesn't throw race at you. It's just there all the time, just
as it is in real life, always beneath the surface. We are let
into the complicated lives and psyches of these characters and
race just lurks all around them like the fire in Backdraft;
liable to engulf them at any second.
No ethnicity goes untouched. The best and worst of every group
of people in this film are explored. In this regard, the best
scene is the confrontation between Howard's Cameron, a successful
black Television director, who regularly swallows his pride to
maintain his buppie lifestyle, and Ludacris' Anthony, a young
militant carjacker. Anthony and his partner, Peter, played by
Tate, attempt to carjack Cameron for his luxury SUV. They caught
him at a bad time. Cameron's inner-Jim Brown has surfaced, awakened
by his wife (Newton) being molested during a traffic stop by a
racist cop (Dillon) and the racist demands of his boss, played
by Tony Danza (more dislikable than usual). Cameron refuses to
get out of his vehicle and proceeds to take Anthony's gun away
from him and kicks this young punk's ass. Peter yells orders for
Cameron to stop and threatens to shoot him, but he's too good
of a kid to actually pull the trigger. The scuffle is broken up
by the sounds of sirens. They all scatter. Cameron and Anthony
end up on a high speed chase together, all the while arguing over
Anthony's gun. After a dangerously fatal confrontation with the
pursuing cops, lead by Phillippe, Cameron and Anthony drive off,
sitting silently, having nothing to say to each other. It's a
powerful scene, as the two infinitely different black man, knowing
everything about the other and yet nothing at all, sit side-by-side,
reflecting on how the cops see them as the same. As the car comes
to a stop, Cameron gives Anthony his gun back and commands him
to look him in the eye. "You embarrass me. And you embarrass
yourself," he tells him, sadly and sternly. That kind
of frankness is rare even within the races. It's easier to discuss
the flaws of other races with persons of your own race than to
discuss the fucked up stuff your own people do.
That's race in America. We only hear about the real dirt in times
of crisis. We'll only hear the real feelings of a rich white whore
about the tattooed Latino man fixing her if she's just endured
being carjacked by two "homies." We'll only hear a rich
black bitch question her husband's sense of pride and black manhood
after he doesn't take a bullet for her rather than let a racist
cop feel her up.
It's all ugly. Let's talk about it.
