Coming in with a Crash Paul Haggis’s 2004 film Crash is about racial relationship in Los Angeles. This film shows how people can change their mindset about race and religion. Crash has actors/actresses such as Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon and Jenifer Esposito. This movie won Best Picture and Matt Dillon won Best Actor in a Supporting Role at the 78th Academy Awards. The first relationship was the one between Sandra Bullock’s character “Jean Cabot” and her maid. The movie was trying to say that there are many relationships like this between a wealthy rich white women who has a Hispanic maid who after get treated poorly, because we American’s don’t want Hispanic speaking people here and American’s think they don’t deserve to steal jobs from us. They are reduced to having to be maids and treated like crap because that’s what ‘their kind’ is good for. But the Hispanic people are actually good people and have respect for the Americans. For example in the movie Jean is rude to her maid yelling at her for not unloading the dish washer and for not doing these simple tasks. Although the maid is treated badly by Jean, she still remains loyal and does all the tasks Jean asks of her. At the beginning Jean doesn’t care about her maid and takes her for grant as just someone to clean her house for her. Then when Jean is all alone in her house taking to her friend about how she is ‘Angry all the time and doesn’t know why’ falls down her stairs and is unable to get up. Luckily her maid is there to help her well she is resting. As the maid is helping Jean adjust in her bed, Jean says to the maid “You want to know something funny? You’re the best friend I’ve got.” At this point Jean realizes how she has been treating her maid and taking her for granted and how she treats everyone so hostile. The maid seems to except her and is glad that Jean has a change of heart and has changed her mindset . The second relationship was between Michael Peña’s character Daniel Ruiz, who is Hispanic, and Shaun Toub’s character Farhad, who is Persian. Daniel is helping fix Farhad’s door and tells him that he needs to replace to door altogether. Farhad misunderstand what he is trying to tell him and starts to yell at him calling him a cheater. Then Farhad says “Do you have friends to fix the door?” Daniel replies with, “Nah, I don't have a friend that fix doors, bro.”
“Then go and fix the fucking lock, you cheater!” Farhad says. Daniel gets frustrated by Farhad’s racial comments and just tells Farhad to pay later. Later that week Farhad’s shop is broken into and all over the walls is graffiti about how he is Arab, even though he is Persian. Farhad thinks Daniel was the one that broken into his shop so he searches for his name.
Meanwhile Daniel comes home tired of all the racial comments he had received and goes to his daughter. Daniel and his family had to move around because they use to leave in a bad neighborhood with gangs so they move to a nicer place. That night he sees his daughter is scared because of their past neighborhood. He tells her there will be no gunshots and tells a story about an invisible cloak he got from a fairy when he was young. Daniel tells her it will keep her safe and unties the invisible cloak and wraps it around his daughter to keep on.
The next day Farhad finds Daniel’s address and, using the gun he buys at the beginning of the movie, goes to Daniel’s house confront him. Daniel is outside getting out of his truck when Farhad comes out and starts going on about his lock being broke and his shop getting vandalized. Farhad starts to point the gun at Daniel. Daniel’s daughter, who is inside the house, hears the yelling and goes outside to see what is happening. Daniel tells his daughter to go back inside but his daughter runs to him and Farhad fires the gun. Daniel’s daughter says “It’s okay your safe now” and Daniel grabs his daughter in his arms. Luckily Daniel’s Daughter is perfectly fine and the two of them go inside, leaving Farhad all alone. Farhad goes back to his shop and sits there for a while until he sees his daughter, Dorri. Farhad tells Dorri, “He shoot a little girl, but she is okay,” and seems shocked like he doesn’t know what just happened. Farhad relates with Daniel because they both have daughters and both care a lot about their child.
The last relationship was the one between Matt Dillon’s character Officer John Ryan and Mrs. Thayer, who is African American, played by Thandie Newton. Officer John is a very racist cop and doesn’t like people of another color. Officer John Ryan pulls Mrs. Thayer and her husband because he sees the wife giving her husband a blow drive while he is driving. While they are pulled over at the side of the road Officer John seems to be rude to the couple not letting them go with a warning. Mrs. Thayer, who has had a few drinks, is back talking the Officer. Officer John decides to do a pat down. He starts to put his arms all over Mrs. Thayer’s butt and thighs and even molest her, Officer John doesn’t seem to care about the women telling him to stop. Later Mrs. Thayer gets in a fight with her husband asking him why he didn’t stick up for her and tell the Officer to stop.
One day while Mrs. Thayer is driving she gets in a wreak causing her gasoline line to break, a fire to start and her car to be turned upside down. Mrs. Thayer is trapped in her car and a witness goes to call the ambulance and the police. Finally when someone comes to help her it’s Officer John and right away she starts to freak out telling him not to touch her. Officer John shows Mrs. Thayer that there is a fire close to the dripping gasoline and that if she doesn’t get out the car might exploded. Mrs. Thayer is finally convinced and allows Officer John to pull her out of the car, even Officer John seems uncomfortable touching her. But Mrs. Thayer seems mad or confused that he was the one to come help her, that she didn’t want his help.
Officer John helps Mrs. Thayer when she is in need and that seems to change his point of view on race. He sees that Mrs. Thayer is just a person who at times needs help and needs someone to lean on
This movie had a lot of Film techniques to make it seem dark, like most of the movie was shot in the nighttime. Also when something bad happened there was always dramatic music or the music was louder and more dramatic. For example, When Mrs. Thayer got in a car wreck there was music playing to show how the characters were feeling or how bad or intense the situation was. The way the film was put together and how they would show a few minutes of one person then skip to another. It helped show there was a lot of chaos going on in all these people’s life. There were jump-cuts between the shoots at a rapid pace to show how fast everything was moving. For example at the beginning with the car wreak, that scene went fast and then jump cut another scene where you meet Jean. It shows how quickly life moves and how you can’t control it.
After watching Crash the quote “We need to crash into something to know that we are alive,” actually means that you need to have something big happen in your life to see the value or to help change your mind about things. Like Officer John Ryan at the beginning was so racist and hated African Americans but by the end when he saw Mrs. Thayer helpless and hurting he finally felt bad and saw she was a human too. Everyone character in this movie had to run into some ‘crash” or situation that molded their point of view on life. This film literally did began with a crash and end with one, because of the car wreaks but he also did mentally and physically. But what they are trying to say is the crash at the beginning was all the wrong and bad things that were happening and all the racism then the crash at the end was how everyone changed their mindset and accepted others. I think this movie was great and the acting was great. It really opened my eyes to racial relationship and helped me see things differently. I would recommended this to everyone to watch.