Crash (2005)
Plot Summary:
A Brentwood housewife and her DA husband. A Persian store owner. Two
police detectives who are also lovers. An African-American television
director and his wife. A Mexican locksmith. Two carjackers. A
rookie cop. A middle-aged Korean couple…
They all live in Los
Angeles. And during the next 36 hours, they will all collide…
Challenging and
thought-provoking, Lions Gate Films’ "Crash" takes a provocative, unflinching
look at the complexities of racial tolerance in comtemporary America.
Diving headlong into the
diverse
melting pot of post-9/11 Los Angeles, this compelling urban drama tracks the
volatile intersections of a multi-ethnic cast of characters’ struggles to
overcome their fears as they careen in and out of one another’s lives. In
the gray area between black and white, victim and aggressor, there are no easy
answers…
Funny, powerful, and always
unpredictable, "Crash" boldly reminds us of the importance of tolerance as it
ventures beyond color lines…and uncovers the truth of our shared humanity.
Images & Plot Summary from:
Official Website:
http://www.crashfilm.com/
Starring: Don Cheadle (Graham), Jennifer Esposito (Ria), Sandra Bullock (Jean), Matt Dillon (Officer Ryan), Brendan Fraser (Rick), Terrence Howard (Cameron), Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges (Anthony), Loretta Devine (Shaniqua)
Film talks about a bunch of strangers from completely different racial and cultural backgrounds colliding after a car crash. Somehow, they all become directly or indirectly connected.
* Police officers Graham - a black man - and Ria - a Puerto Rican woman - (they are also lovers) are involved in a car crash in the beginning of the film. Ria gets into a heated argument with the Korean woman who crashed into them. Graham walks to a murder crime scene and stares at something…Graham and Ria are also involved in a investigation regarding the death of a white police officer and drugs. Though it looked like a simple case of a corrupt cop doing drug dealings, Graham and Ria finds new evidence that maybe the cop was innocent. In the end, Graham is forced to discard the new evidence and lie, telling District Attorney Rick that the cop had been doing bad things (which would make Rich look less biased towards whites).
* Peter and Anthony are 2 young black car thieves/carjackers. Rather than summarize their story, their involvements with the other strangers will be mentioned in the other stories as they seem to have a common connection with a lot of them.
* District Attorney Rick and his wife, Jean (a white couple), are carjacked by Peter and Anthony. They drive off with their SUV. Rick and Jean are both visibly shaken. Rick is more worried about his political career as he doesn’t want to appear too tough on the black kids and lose support from the black community. He decides to meet up with Officer Graham and have a talk with him… meanwhile, Jean had become more paranoid and upset after the carjacking. She yells at Rick for hiring a Mexican hoodlum locksmith to change the locks and demands the locks to be changed again in the morning (the Mexican locksmith was still there and had heard everything she said). She is rude to their maid, Maria (Yomi Perry). In the end, Jean realizes the error of her ways after spraining her ankle while falling down the stairs. She hugs Maria, telling her she’s the best friend she’s ever had.
* A Persian store owner, Farhad (Shaun Toub) purchases a gun to protect his family. His daughter, Dorri (Bahar Soomekh) is with him. He gets into an argument with the gun store owner (Jack McGee). Dorri picks out the bullets for the gun. Later, Farhad hires Daniel (Michael Pena), the same Mexican locksmith from the Rick and Jean story, to fix the store’s lock. Daniel tells Farhad he needs to replace the door, not the lock. Not understanding much English, Farhad thinks Daniel is trying to cheat him, calls him a cheater, and yells at him to fix the lock. Daniel scrunches up the invoice and storms out of the store. The store ends up getting robbed and vandalized. The insurance company won’t cover his losses due to him neglecting to fix the door. Furious, Farhad grabs the gun and goes to Daniel’s house. He holds him at gunpoint and demands payment for his losses. Daniel’s little daughter, Lara (Ashlyn Sanchez), runs out and throws herself into her father’s arms to protect him just as Farhad fires a shot. Thinking the little girl is dead, Daniel and his wife scream in anguish and grief while Farhad stares in bewilderment and shame. Luckily, Lara turns out fine without a mark on her body. We later find out Dorri had loaded the gun with blanks. Farhad goes back to his store and cries, telling his daughter that the little girl must have been an angel sent to teach him a lesson.
* Daniel (Mexican locksmith mentioned from the Rick & Jean story and the Persian store owner story) comes home and finds his little daughter hiding under her bed because she thought she heard gunshots. He reassures her by giving her an invisible magic impenetrable cape that will protect her from harm. It’s the same cape that she thought could save her daddy when she jumped in his arms as the Persian store owner fired the gunshot.
* Office Ryan (a white cop) argues with Shaniqua (a black woman) about the lack of benefits and help his father is receiving from them. He insults her and she hangs up on him. When he visits the office to talk to her, he makes a lot of racial insults and she ends up throwing him out.
* Cameron, a black television director, and his wife, Christine (Thandie Newton) are driving in their SUV (similar to the one DA Rick and Jean drive in). They get pulled over by 2 white cops, Officer Ryan and rookie cop Officer Hanson (Ryan Phillippe). Though they hadn’t done anything wrong, Officer Ryan is rude to them and humiliates the wife by groping her while Officer Hanson looks on uncomfortably. Ryan lets them go with a warning. Christine is angry with Cameron for not defending her and he storms out after having a bad argument…Later, Cameron gets carjacked by Anthony and Peter. He fights back by beating up on Anthony. Cops arrive, and Peter runs away. Georgie and Anthony take off in the SUV and are soon involved in a car chase with the cops. Officer Hanson turns out to be one of the cops. Hanson talks the other cops into letting Cameron off with a harsh warning. Cameron lets Anthony (who had been hiding in the SUV) go, but not before telling him he’s an embarrassment.
* Officer Hanson requests to have a new partner because Officer Ryan is a bigot. The lieutenant (who is black) tells him it was hard for a black man like him to get to where he was, so if Hanson causes trouble, it will make everyone look bad. Lieutenant tells him to claim a flatulence problem as it is the only way to avoid working with Officer Ryan.
* Cameron’s wife, Christine, is involved in a bad car accident on the highway. Officer Ryan arrives to help get her out of the car. When she sees him, she screams at him not to touch her and refuses help from him. Ryan talks her into letting him help her when he explains the car will explode soon. He manages to get her out on time. Later, she and Cameron make up.
* Officer Hanson is driving on the road when he sees Peter trying to hitchhike a ride. He picks him up and they start talking. Hanson starts to get uneasy when he sees a bulge in Peter’s pocket. Peter sees a similar religious statue he has on Hanson’s car’s dashboard and starts laughing. Hanson gets pissed and thinks he’s laughing at him, and tells him to get out. Peter reaches into his pocket to take out the statue he has, but Hanson takes out his gun and shoots him. When he sees what Peter has in his hand, he realizes his mistake and panics. He leaves Peter’s body on the side of the road, burns and abandons his car.
* Back to Graham at the murder scene. As it turns out, the dead body he sees is actually his brother, Peter (Larenz Tate), who had been shot dead. Graham’s mother (Beverly Todd) had been bugging him to find his brother, but never does. She blames him for Peter’s death. She thinks that Peter did come home once to stock up her fridge with groceries though it was really Graham who did that, but he doesn’t tell her it was him.
* Peter and Anthony accidentally hits a middle-aged Korean man while driving the stolen SUV. He is badly hurt, so they dump him in front of the hospital. The Korean man’s wife turns out be the same woman who had been arguing with Ria in the beginning of the film. Later, Anthony steals the Korean man’s van and takes it to the chop shop. They find out the Korean guy had been smuggling illegal aliens in the van. The guy at the chop shop offers Anthony $500/person, but he passes. Instead, he drops them off to a Korean area in LA, gives them a little money for food, and drives away…the Korean man turns out to be okay. The wife visits him in the hospital. He tells her to deposit a big cheque (is obviously the money he got for smuggling the illegal aliens).
The film ends with Shaniqua getting into a car accident in the Korean area (right after Anthony drives away) with a Hispanic man. They start arguing, racial insults fly back and forth. It begans to snow. Credits.
A brilliant film which explores racism and stereotypes in people. The various stories and plots all blended together quite nicely. There is good and bad in all people, no matter how good-hearted some are. The film brilliantly shows how even a little racism is inescapable in all of us. Thought-provoking, superb cast, well-written, go see this film.
Want to know more?
Read more about this film at The Internet Movie Database.
Don’t forget to Check out the official site!
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One Response to “Crash (2005)”
September 26th, 2005 at 9:47 pm
This was one great film. Very thought provoking.
Shows how we are all ignorant to our own biases great or small and the impacts they have in others lives.
Brilliant Movie!
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