Best Picture Winners #07: Crash

Oh, to put into words how awful this film is... where do I even begin? This movie attempts to comment on the issue of racism in America with the subtlety of a nuclear weapon. Every single character in this film (with the exception of Michael Peña) is both a racist, and a one-dimensional stereotype that sees every single issue exclusively through the lens of racism. Everyone is referred to by their race first, then their name. The two Hispanic characters are referred to as "gangbanger, white, gangster, thug, and cheater" just to name a few. The two Asian characters are exclusively referred to as "Chinamen" the entire film, by several different characters. These are just two prominent examples of how there's no 'characters' in this film, only caricatures. This movie not only fails to tackle the issue of race/racism in any respectful way, it goes so far that it is outright insulting and offensive. To treat racism as this sin that every human being is both guilty of, and incapable of changing or bettering is disgusting.

Even if one ignores the extremely over-the-top race obsession this movie has, the plot and events which take place here are laughably unbelievable. This whole film takes place within a span of 36 hours in Los Angeles (a city of nearly 4 million people), and yet the same 16 people run into each other CONSTANTLY. The odds that these people are all crossing paths, despite being in wildly different social circles, parts of the city and jobs is ludicrous to put it simply. I can appreciate a story that tells a select few stories and weaves them together well, but this doesn't come close to that by a long shot.

Another thing that bothered me was the screenplay; the writing in this film is shockingly bad for an Oscar-winning screenplay. Racism is the only thing any of these characters ever talk about. That isn't even an exaggeration on my part, there are three scenes in this film in which race is not mentioned once. Three. Every character in this movie is constantly spouting off race-related factoids or statistics, or their personal philosophy of race and who is to blame for what, or they're calling everyone racial slurs as casually as they breathe. It has been a very long time since I saw a film that lacked any semblance of subtlety as deeply as this film does. A movie, especially one with a topic as complicated and historied as racism, is supposed to reveal it's meaning purposefully, and earn the story beats it reaches for, not hit us over the head with the message they're trying to show and keep hitting us over the head the rest of the runtime.

Lastly, the biggest single issue I had with this film was the Matt Dillon character. He's a police officer, and in the first scene we see of him, he pulls over a black couple with zero legal cause to do so (a fact his partner points out very deliberately), he makes moves like he is going to arrest them, and then he publicly molests the woman and tries to taunt her husband into doing or saying something just so he can arrest or even shoot him. We see him the following morning go to his father's insurance provider, openly insult her and state that because she is a black woman, she clearly stole the job of a white man, before trying to offer up some lame story about how black people are responsible for his father's life being so miserable. He then goes on shift and happens upon the overturned car of the woman he just sexually assaulted the night prior, before "heroically" saving her from the burning wreck. This movie legitimately tries to redeem him and then treats him like he's a hero the rest of the film. It's f---ing abhorrent. This is not a good man who has "a little racism" in him, this is a monster who we are expected to cheer for because "he didn't let a woman die in a car accident."

This movie is legitimately one of the worst films I have ever seen, and it was made by a convicted rapist. This might just be the single worst film to have won an Oscar in any category and I pray I never need to watch it again. If I spend another minute thinking about this film it's going to ruin my day so I'm going to go watch something cheerful to clear my mind of this, like 'The Deer Hunter' or 'Ordinary People.'

Rating: 1/10

Did it deserve Best Picture: This didn't deserve a single nomination in any category.