Crash

2005
Paul Haggis

3/10 (lacks even an ounce of subtlety)

This is my nomination for the worst film to ever be selected Best Picture by the “Academy.” It’s got good acting and what else? How about every single racial cliché and stereotype to ever grace humankind’s bigoted brain? And amazingly, Haggis compiles them all into less than two hours of movie, managing to make sure that characters stumble all over each other throughout in the most incredible and unlikely of circumstances. This movie is the definition of the word “contrived.” Haggis has created situations that WOULD NEVER HAPPEN IN REAL LIFE just to try and make you, the viewer, feel sad, or happy, or whatever emotion he wants. In other words, he’s a manipulative son of a bitch and his machinations worked well enough to get the most prestigious award in filmdom. Shame on all of you who liked this movie!

It doesn’t deserve a more lengthy review than this. I will just say that it pisses me off that people thought this was good just because it was such a timely topic, or “controversial.” I don’t even know what the excuse is for thinking it’s good anymore, and I don’t really care. Any one of the 6 or 7 stories present in this movie would have made a decent film on its own. But Haggis, apparently worried that you won’t get the point, mashes them all into one appallingly sentimental mess that lacks even a shred of credibility. In other words, the movie is the opposite of “subtle,” which used to be a sort of indicator of quality.

See that guy crying in the poster up there? That’s how I felt by the end of the movie: outraged grief that I had wasted two hours of my life on such a piece of sentimental trash. That’s how you will feel too if you decide to watch it. You will now have nobody to blame but yourself; you’ve been warned.

24 March 2010

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