Stars: Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Thandie Newton, Matt Dillon, Ryan Phillippe, Brendan Fraser

Director: Paul Haggis

Summary: A stellar cast collides haphazardly in this insightfully written roundelay of racism, rage, and redemption which takes place over the course of one day in LA and involves a circus of cops, robbers, and civilians. A detective with a heroin addict mother and criminal brother investigates the shooting of a black cop by a white one. Two hoodlums jack the car of the District Attorney and his angry, racist wife. Terrence Howard and Thandie Newton play an upper-class African American couple harassed by a racist cop. And the chaos continues, with other roles played by Tony Danza, Michael Pena, and Jennifer Esposito. A propulsive Mark Isham score keeps the disparate narrative threads electrified from the get-go; when they finally connect, the results are explosive and beautiful. Everything is tied together with tight editing and artistic shots of car headlights cutting through dense morning smog. Writer-director Paul Haggis' (writer of 'Million Dollar Baby') Los Angeles is a world of alienated people struggling to connect across vast barriers of language, class, and culture; that they manage to do so is testament to their depth as characters more than some trite message of brotherly love. There are no easy answers, but this film is tough, intelligent, and gutsy enough to find some anyway; and for that it's a winner.

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Movie studios, by and large, avoid controversial subjects like race the way you might avoid a hive of angry bees. So it's remarkable that Crasheven got made; that it's a rich, intelligent, and moving exploration of the interlocking lives of a dozen Los Angeles residents--black, white, latino, Asian, and Persian--is downright amazing.

A politically nervous district attorney (Brendan Fraser) and his high-strung wife (Sandra Bullock, biting into a welcome change of pace from Miss Congeniality) get car-jacked by an oddly sociological pair of young black men (Larenz Tate and Chris "Ludacris" Bridges); a rich black T.V. director (Terrence Howard) and his wife (Thandie Newton) get pulled over by a white racist cop (Matt Dillon) and his reluctant partner (Ryan Phillipe); a detective (Don Cheadle) and his Latina partner and lover (Jennifer Esposito) investigate a white cop who shot a black cop--these are only three of the interlocking stories that reach up and down class lines.

Writer/director Paul Haggis (who wrote the screenplay for Million Dollar Baby) spins every character in unpredictable directions, refusing to let anyone sink into a stereotype. The cast--ranging from the famous names above to lesser-known but just as capable actors like Michael Pena (Buffalo Soldiers) and Loretta Devine (Woman Thou Art Loosed)--meets the strong script head-on, delivering galvanizing performances in short vignettes, brief glimpses that build with gut-wrenching force. This sort of multi-character mosaic is hard to pull off; Crash rivals such classics as Nashvilleand Short Cuts. A knockout. --Bret Fetzer