Review: Crash

Many people fail to accept the unfortunate truth that racism still exists in our current society. It shows up in many different forms and situations. “Crash” is a movie that accurately displays different ways racism is played out in our culture.
Issues of race cause a group of strangers in Los Angeles to physically and emotionally collide during the movie “Crash”. It brings to life the real issues of discrimination that occur daily and are often overlooked. The movie includes several characters that are all somehow involved in discrimination. Some characters fall victim to racism while others commit acts of discrimination. Throughout the movie it becomes clear that each character is related in some way and how discrimination affects them all.
Graham is a police detective whose brother is a street criminal, and it is painful for him to know that his mother cares more about his thieving brother than him. Rick is an L.A. district attorney whose wife, Jean is very discriminative against people who do not share the same skin color as her. Jean’s worst fears of minorities come to life when her car is stolen at gunpoint by two African American men. Anthony is one of the men who assisted in the car jacking and he hates Caucasian people as much as Jean dislikes people of color. Anthony’s partner in crime was Peter who is also Graham’s brother. Cameron is an African American man who has earned a respectable living and is fairly wealthy. While driving home from a party, Cameron and his wife, Christine were pulled over by Officer Ryan and humiliated. Officer Ryan’s new partner, Officer Hansen watches in disgust while his partner inappropriately searches the couple. Daniel is a Mexican American, hard-working locksmith and dedicated father. However, many people don’t trust him because of the image he displays. Although he is an honest man, his ethnic background combined with his tattoos is enough to make people suspicious of him. Farhad is a Middle Eastern store owner, who fails to trust most people. Due to his lack of trust, and his previous experiences of being discriminated against, Farhad feels he needs a gun to protect himself. These characters were all interconnected and it were all in some way affected by the racism and hatred around them.
When watching the movie Crash, feelings of anger and frustration were brought to the surface. It was upsetting to see people act with such hatred and discriminate against people solely based on race. It was even more frustrating to accept the idea that similar situations occur in real life. Judging and stereotyping people according to their ethnic background is unfair and wrong. Although they were too blind to see it, every person in the movie was a part of the same race; the human race. Each person was different, unique and special in their own way. Some of the characters in “Crash” failed to recognize the ignorance of their racist beliefs and the negative effects it had on people. For example, Jean was so biased against people of color that she didn’t even trust the locksmith that was hired to change her locks. The locksmith, Daniel was a trustworthy man. However, Jean could not look past his outside image to see this.
To further emphasize this point, Daniel had to go through another similar situation in the movie. Farhad, the Middle Eastern store owner, didn’t trust Daniel when he told him that he needed to fix his door not the locks. Because of Farhad’s ignorance, his shop was broken into. He blamed Daniel and retaliated by trying to kill him. There is no way that Farhad could justify what he did. He was wrong for not listening to Daniel and blaming his own ignorance on someone else because he was blinded by hate.
A part of the movie that was extremely disturbing happened when Peter was killed by Officer Hansen. Throughout the entire movie, Officer Hansen was trying to be fair to people of all different ethnic backgrounds. He was portrayed as an understanding young man with the potential to see both sides of a story, regardless of race. However, I believe all the hatred that was occurring around caused Officer Hansen to become corrupted. Although he wanted to trust Peter, Officer Hansen couldn’t help but think of the stereotype that has been formed about African American men. When Peter was just trying to show Officer Hansen a figurine they coincidentally shared, he shot him, thinking Peter was pulling out a gun.
Overall, this movie did an exceptional job of accurately portraying racism. Each character in the movie shared some kind of special link and it was very interesting to find out how they were all related. “Crash” is a movie that forces people to use their intellect and causes realization of what goes on our culture today. It displays a powerful message that is almost impossible to ignore. Racism is wrong and discriminating against people solely based on their ethnic background is ignorant and can only result in negative outcomes.