OPPapers.com

Crash

When writer-director Paul Haggis and his co-writer Bobby Moresco set out to write Crash, they did not intend to write about racism, though that is what the film ended up being about. Their original idea was to follow a series of characters through Los Angeles and see what happened when they 'collided' with strangers. The result is a film with multiple storylines – five to start with and 11 by the time these have split into different strands – which is more like a tapestry of life in L.A. than a conventionally plotted story. The techniques used to link these numerous plots are, among others, the characters themselves, plot and cinematic parallels and echoes, and the traditional unifying device of motifs.
The characters in this film are in a way like snooker balls on a table; hit one into a group and they each knock into others. The film opens with the arrival of Detective Graham Waters and his partner Ria at a crime scene, where Graham finds the body of his brother Peter – though this last fact is not revealed until later. The film then jumps back 24 hours to show the chain of events that lead to Peter's death. During those 24 hours, Graham investigates the shooting of a black police officer, which leads to a meeting at the DA's office where Peter's arrest warrant is used as a lever to have Graham support a prosecution. Peter is in trouble because of a car-jacking – an event that triggers a chain of events. The Navigator belongs to the DA Rick Cabot himself. This vehicle knocks over Choi, who is the protagonist of a third plot-line (the smuggling of illegal Asian workers). The SUV rejected as unsafe, Peter and his partner Anthony attempt to steal another Navigator, thus linking another plot, that of a successful black couple Cameron and Christine Thayer. They have previously been the victims of an assault by a racist police officer, Ryan, whose behaviour has so disgusted his partner Hanson that he asks for a new partner. Hanson later saves Cameron...