Plot Summary:

The film «Crash» is an action-drama from 2004. We get to meet several different persons, with different ethnic backgrounds. We are meeting: a black police investigator, a housewife and her DA husband, an Iranian store owner, two police officers, were one of them are very racist, a black television producer and his wife, a Mexican locksmith and two black car-jackers. What they got in common is that they all live in Los Angeles, and they are all, more or less, having racist thoughts and prejudices against other people. We are following them over a 36 hoers period, and during this time they are colliding into each other and their own prejudices are put to the test.

The film starts and ends with the same car crash. The black police detective, Graham Waters arrive at the scene, and are told that they have found a dead kid. Graham are from a poor family, where his mum are using drugs and his brother are stealing cars. His mum always tells him to get his brother safe home, and she blames him for that his brother are like he is.

Then we are taken 36 hoers back in time and see what had happened. We meet Graham's brother, Peter, and his friend Anthony, who both are black. Anthony is paranoid, and believes that everyone is racist towards blacks. They are inner city car-jackers, and steel the car of Jean and Rick Cabot. Rick is a white District Attorney, and he and his wife are rich upper-class people.

Jean are having prejudices against everyone, and are getting really angry when the locksmith Daniel are changing their lock. He is Hispanic, and is often faced with discrimination because of how he looks like: shaved head and tattoos. Jean is accusing him for selling their keys to his “gang”, while Daniel actually is a harmonic family-man, who loves his daughter more than everything. He is also changing the lock in the front door to the shop of an Iranian store owner. The Iranian, Farhad, is afraid that people will break into his shop in the night and destroy everything. Therefore he and his daughter, Dorri, have bought a gun. Daniel tells Farhad that it's nothing wrong with the lock, but that the door need to be changed. Farhad thinks Daniel is setting him up, and they start to argue. That night someone breaks into the store and destroys everything inside. The insurance-company doesn't cover the damages, because the door was broken. Farhad blames Daniel, and goes to his home, to get his money back. It all ends with that Farhad pulls the gun, and shot at Daniel, but Daniel`s daughter who believes she has her fathers invisible protection-cloak jump in front to protect her father. What they don't know is that there are just blanks in the gun, and it is only making sound.

At the same time the two police officers, John and Tom are stopping the car of the black Tv-producer Cameron and his wife Christine. John is really racist and for no reason he makes Cameron step out of the car, so he can search him. Christine is getting furious and yell at John, and John is making her step out of the car too. But he is not just searching her, he is molesting her, and Christine is getting furious with her husband when they get home, because he were just standing there.

Tom does not like what he see when John is molesting Christine, so he goes to his boss and is allowed to drive alone. John is at the same time having problems with his father. He is afraid that he has prostate cancer but have been misdiagnosed with bladder infection.

The day after Anthony and Peter are with a mistake trying to steel Cameron's car. They never steel from a black person. Cameron is getting really furious and they start to fight. It ends up with Cameron and Anthony driving from the police, while Peter are running. Tom save Cameron from being shot by the police, when the catch up with them.

Later Tom pick up Peter, who are hitch-hiking and they are starting to argue when peter starts laughing and Tom think it is of him. It ends up with Tom shooting Peter, because he thinks he is pulling a gun out of his pocket, while he is actually pulling up figure of Saint Christopher. Tom stops the car, dumps the dead body in the ditch and burn his car.

In the car crash Christine is trapped in a up-side-down car, and some gasoline around the car starts to burn. John is the first police officer to arrive at her car, and helps her out. She didn't want to be saved by him because of what he did to her the day before, but at the end that is the only solution.

The dead kid that we heard about in the beginning of the film turns out to be Graham's brother Peter.

My opinion:

I liked the film very much. It has a complicated and difficult story, and you meet a lot of people you need to remember. I think the film was really pointing out the differences between people, and that everybody have prejudice to people that are not like themselves. I think it is putting the light on a problem in the American society and it has really important themes: racism, prejudice and fear of what you don't know. And I think the film described very well how people are judging others because of how they look like, before they had get to know them.

It also shows that a lot of the people were faced with racism just because they were from a particular country, or had a particular skin colour.

I also liked that the film was named Crash, because it does not just refer to the physical car crash, but also to the crashes between the different people. They crash when they meet, because they are all having their own opinions of how the other person are, based on racist thoughts, and thoughts that your own race is the best. Therefore it is also a psychological crash, and most of these persons change their point of view, and see things they didn't see earlier after meeting each other.

I really liked the film, and I strongly recommend Crash.