Roger Ebert Home

'Crash' as black comedy/farce

From: Chris Scott, Los Angeles, CA

Reading Roger's defense of "Crash" I came across his description of the following events in the film: "After a carjacking, a liberal politician's wife insists all their locks be changed -- and then wants them changed again, because she thinks the Mexican-American locksmith will send his "homies" over with the pass key. The same locksmith has trouble with an Iranian store owner who thinks the Mexican-American is black. But it drives the Iranian crazy that everyone thinks he is Arab, when they should know that Iranians are Persian. Buying a gun to protect himself, he gets into a shouting match with a gun dealer who has a lot of prejudices about, yes, Arabs."

It was in reading this that I realized "Crash" should have been made as a farce, satire, or black comedy! It would have been far more effective and less patronizing to its audience, just as "Dr. Stangelove" was a far more effective anti-war movie than the self-important "Fail Safe."

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

Latest blog posts

Latest reviews

Comments

comments powered by Disqus