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Crash

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Starring: Matt Dillon, Don Cheadle, Thandie Newton, Brendan Fraser

Director: Paul Haggis

Category: IIB

More than a decade after the Rodney King riots, people in America still just can't get along. That includes film critics. A war of words broke out between Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times and the LA Weekly's Scott Foundas over Paul Haggis' surprise Oscar best picture. Ebert agrees it is the movie of the year, Foundas thinks it's 2005's worst film - and the two have traded not-so-friendly rebuttals in print.

Crash certainly pushes sensitive buttons and it has divided audiences, but is it a better movie than Brokeback Mountain? Not by a long shot. It may be an effective ensemble piece dealing with the racially incendiary city of Los Angeles, but it's also disingenuous, cliched and as emotionally simplistic as a McDonald's commercial.

The film begins with a minor fender bender between an Asian woman and a Latino female who end up screaming at each other after the accident. Then, a white couple is car-jacked by two black kids, an Iranian shopkeeper receives racial slurs from a redneck, and a black yuppie TV executive and his wife are harangued by white cops who've had a bad day. Each incident triggers further anger and resentment, with victims then perpetrating their own ignorance and stereotype on the next person of a different race.

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