The Crash that could save America

For a change, I'm praising something rather than ranting or griping, and the reason is that I just saw a movie that really cuts through the bull about racism in America.

Paul Haggis establishes himself as a master director with this, his first major directorial effort. Prior to this, you might have known him (if you knew him at all) as a screenwriter for several television series, including thirtysomething and Family Law and the movie hit, Million Dollar Baby.

A Canadian by birth (London, Ontario), Haggis' time in Hollywood has certainly given him a studied appreciation not only of the US and our racial conundrums, but of LA as well.

Using the device of a web of incredibly unlikely coincidences, he takes us on a tour of our racial disease with an unflinching eye, exploring the racism in every ethnic segment of our society, including the minorities.

Haggis does so with unusually complex characters who at first appear to be stereotypes but prove to have unexpected depth.

You start out thinking you know who is bad and who is good, but by the end of the movie you realize that people simply aren't that simple. A seeming anti-black bigot can place his life on the line to save a black's life. A person you were sure was "good" ends up killing someone through making a race-based assumption. Someone fearful of another race discovers someone of that race is her best friend. And on and on and on.

Nobody is spared and almost every conceivable grievance (or type of grievance) one race or ethnic group has against another is explored.

Crash is miles ahead of most movies about race, which tend to be didactic or preachy. This one says, basically, before you feel contempt for anyone else, first look at yourself.

I would love to recount some of the specific incidents and quotable dialog in the movie, but I wouldn't want to spoil one single second of it for you.

As I hinted above, Los Angeles is almost a character in the movie itself. Haggis has a grasp of this melting pot city that parallels that of Michael Mann and James Ellroy.

All in all, this is one of the most important movies about race in America ever made, and I can't recomment it highly enough.