Symbolism 101: Snow in Southern California = Redemption.

You know how it goes. You’re driving down the street, minding your own business, when wham! Racism smashes right into you.

Crash is one of those day-in-the-life-of-Los Angeles type movies where a handful of characters from different socio-economic backgrounds get caught in each other’s orbits, their lives intersecting in random and not so random ways. All the storylines involve racism in one way or another and by the end there aren’t many characters that haven’t proven themselves capable of some form of bigotry.

A TV director (Terrence Howard) and his glamorous wife (Thandie Newton) are pulled over and humiliated by a racist cop (Matt Dillon) for no reason other than that they’re black. A spoiled housewife’s (Sandra Bullock) prejudices come to the forefront after a carjacking. The carjackers themselves (Ludacris and Larenz Tate) have some highly amusing riffs on race relations. A Latino locksmith tries to make a life where his young daughter doesn’t have to fear drive-by shootings. A Persian shopkeeper faces harassment by neighborhood thugs. 

"Mind your own business, Tony Danza. I'm the boss now."

Subtle it ain’t, but still, Crash worked for me. Yes, the plot hinges on coincidences, the characters circling around and back at each other like angry square dancers. Yes, the narrative could be construed as manipulative. Yes, the dialogue is at times both too articulate and too blunt to be realistic. (Most of these characters wouldn’t be so upfront about their bigotry; they’d have learned to be sneaky about it.)

So what? Written and directed by Paul Haggis, whose screenplay for Million Dollar Baby earned him an Oscar nomination, Crash plays as a parable, an intricate, ugly fairy tale.  Its contrivances and conceits serve a larger purpose. The criss-crossing narratives show us the characters in a variety of situations, and demonstrate that everybody is capable of both intolerance and compassion, that a person’s actions may have less to do with the situation at hand than with some personal frustration, that sometimes just stepping back and taking a deep breath can prevent a tragedy.

Crash can be heavy-handed and maybe you’re not up for a two-hour reminder that, as human beings we pretty much all suck. Or at least are capable of sucking. But there’s optimism amid the gloom, and with its stellar cast and poetic meditations on humanity, Crash is a rewarding and thoughtful film.

Gorilla Pants rating: 3 out of 4 bananas