Systemology

The film follows the seemingly disconnected stories of Los Angeles residents -- white, black, Latino, whatever -- and how their lives intersect in unexpected ways, forcing them to confront their own prejudice.

Paul Haggis's multiple award-winning directorial dйbut is set in a Los Angeles that is part Quentin Tarantino, part Paul Thomas Anderson, part Spike Lee, and part Bret Easton Ellis; it is also a surreal place that has precious little in common with the actual Southern California metropolis.

Crash is all about how the Angeleno boiling (definitely not melting) pot is about to explode at any minute. According to screenwriters Haggis and Bobby Moresco, Los Angeles denizens spend all their spare time hating, fearing, misunderstanding, and cheating on one another. And perhaps much of that is true, except that most of that hate, fear, misunderstanding, and cheating have absolutely nothing to do with ethnic or national differences. But not in Haggis and Moresco's L.A., where everything revolves around skin color and nationality.

Subtlety is a word that is apparently missing from Haggis's film dictionary. Million Dollar Baby, which he adapted for the screen, is filled with caricatures instead of characters, while Crash is chiefly a parade of ethno-oriented verbal and physical assaults interspersed among different subplots tied together through contrived "coincidences." Thus, we go from the heavily accented Chinese lashing out at white Americans who then lash out at black Americans who lash out at other white Americans who lash out at Iranians who lash out at Mexicans who work so hard they don't have the energy to lash out at anyone.

Several good performances (particularly Matt Dillon and Ryan Phillippe as police officers, Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges as a race-obsessed thug, and Thandie Newton as the highstrung wife of a television director), Mark Isham's affecting minimalist score, and generally excellent technical credits help to add depth to Haggis and Moresco's screenplay, but none of the positive elements found in Crash - even the couple of plot twists that ring true - are enough to lift it out of its inherent simple-mindedness.

At the end of the film, instead of frogs falling from the sky we get some much-needed snow to cool things down. The melting pot will keep on simmering, but the heavens won't let it explode into a zillion pieces. Considering