Friday, 05/06/05

'Crash' burns with brilliant storytelling

Paul Haggis' Crash is a mesmerizing urban drama that gets under the skin of racial intolerance more forcefully than any film since Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing 16 years ago.

Don Cheadle, Sandra Bullock, Matt Dillon, Terrence Howard and Thandie Newton head a superb group of actors who are all working in true ensemble fashion, as several story threads intermingle over 36 hours in Los Angeles.

As the film opens, a police detective (Cheadle) has been called to a crime scene and reacts with great dismay at what he finds. We don't discover what he's found till the finale.

It's a framing device as we then go back 36 hours to trace the stressed-filled lives of several L.A. citizens:

• A police officer (Dillon) whose frustrations over an infirm and ill-treated father erupt in misdirected and cruel racism.

• A district attorney (Brendan Fraser) who measures everything by its potential political impact and his snob of a wife (Bullock) who assumes their Hispanic repairman is a gang-banger.

• An upscale black filmmaker (Howard) who is reluctant to combat the racism that confronts him, and his lovely wife (Newton), who resents him for it.

• Two young carjackers (Larenz Tate and Chris ''Ludacris'' Bridges) who argue about why white folks fear they're thugs (when, of course, they are).

• An Iranian shopkeeper (Shaun Toub) who buys a gun to ward off the increasing threat of robbery.

• A Mexican-American locksmith (Michael Pena) who dreams of a better life for him and his young daughter.

• A homicide detective (Cheadle) who also cares for his elderly mother, despite her obvious indifference.

These stories and more are examined with precision and realistic tension, and all dovetail to underscore today's stifling problems of intolerance and ethnic suspicion, elevated by the ever-increasing stress of day-to-day living. (The stories peak with unforgettable moments of emotional intensity.)

With Crash, Haggis continues the rise that began with his Oscar nomination for writing Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby. This time, Haggis also produces and, for the first time, directs, displaying a remarkable clarity of vision and organization, given his story's complex, multiple threads.

The result is the first film of 2005 that has a guaranteed spot on our eventual list of the best of the year. In it, he holds up a mirror to us all. Then, through Dillon's character, he warns us, ''You think you know who you are. You have no idea.''