80
A haunting, perceptive and uncompromising examination of controversial subject matter, expertly written and directed by Paul Haggis and characterised by excellent performances from its starry cast.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
80
Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum
Pivots on the characters' racism and xenophobia, playing tricks with our own biases and ultimately justifying an extravagant array of coincidences and surprises.
50
Charlotte Observer by Lawrence Toppman
A well-intentioned but obvious, often clumsy picture.
100
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
The stunning, must-see drama Crash is proof that words have not lost the ability to shock in our anesthetized society.
50
Baltimore Sun by Michael Sragow
New York critics have anointed Crash in advance as the Second Coming, but it's just another over-ambitious first movie.
88
Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington
Like Robert Altman's "Short Cuts," it is an all-star fresco, but the stars--none of whom carries the movie--get to play the kind of morally ambivalent, sometimes unlikable parts that big-name actors usually avoid.
90
Dallas Observer by Robert Wilonsky
What makes Crash so gripping--so terrifying in spots, so moving in others, and even a little funny at times--is how nothing happens as we think it will.
100
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
Haggis writes with such directness and such a good ear for everyday speech that the characters seem real and plausible after only a few words. His cast is uniformly strong; the actors sidestep cliches and make their characters particular.
100
Austin Chronicle by Steve Davis
It's the most compelling American movie to come around in a long, long time.
63
Its characters come straight from the assembly line of screenwriting archetypes, and too often they act in ways that archetypes, rather than human beings, do. You can feel its creator shuttling them here and there on the grid of greater LA, pausing portentously between each move.