OPPapers.com

Crash Review

The movie “Crash” is a stuck-to-your-seat thriller with true meaning. It is easy to see why is has been so successful and garnered so many awards. The viewer is witness to a great cast with several intertwining story lines that centralize around the common stereotypes of many races that plague our society today. We see several important characters that tell the story through several dynamic perspectives that are detrimental to understanding the film, as well as to the understanding of how we can get past these stereotypes and misconceptions in order to not just better our society as a whole, but better our businesses and employees in entirety.
Arguably the character with the most severe preconceived notions and racial intolerances would be Officer John Ryan. Ryan, probably in his mid thirties, is a police officer for the Los Angeles County Police Department. On and off the job, he is, generally, the best example of how not to treat people of other races. Ryan demonstrates very racist tendencies. The viewer’s first encounter with Ryan does not prove otherwise. We see Ryan having a telephone conversation with some sort of secretary regarding his fathers HMO plan. The secretary is African American. The conversation is not going the way Ryan wants it to and therefore ends the conversation with a racial comment regarding the secretary’s name. Ryan proceeds to hang up the phone and enter his car where he receives a call to look out for a stolen black Cadillac, driven by a black male. Ryan sees a Cadillac, which, although clearly not the right Cadillac, he pulls over anyway. If it was not apparent before, the viewer now gets a front row seat to Ryan’s gross displays of racism when he violates and humiliates the African American couple in the vehicle. Ryan inappropriately frisks the woman while making the husband, at the same time, watch helplessly and apologize for breaking the law.
It is not rational, nor moral to sympathize with Ryan being racist,...