Crash
Crash
NC-17 | 20 March 1997 (USA)
Crash Trailers

After getting into a serious car accident, a TV director discovers an underground sub-culture of scarred, omnisexual car-crash victims who use car accidents and the raw sexual energy they produce to try to rejuvenate his sex life with his wife.

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Reviews
GrimPrecise

I'll tell you why so serious

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ChicDragon

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

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Geraldine

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

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Staci Frederick

Blistering performances.

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Asif Khan (asifahsankhan)

To put it mildly, Crash is a movie that you can either accept or you can't. You are either able to see beyond the trappings presented on the outside, or all you see is the outside. I'm not going to say that you either get it or you don't, because that would be wrong. However, Crash is a film that has been polarising since it was screened for the first time. With that comes a certain idea of what the film is, and all I can say is that the people who take the negative view on Crash are selling the creative mind of David Cronenberg criminally short.If you heard that Crash is all about sex and car crashes, then you heard correctly, but you also heard wrong. The sex and the car crashes are windows into the true story that Cronenberg wants to tell. The ideas he wants to examine are laid out for the viewer through the sex and car crashes. To look at the sex and see only sex, or to look at the car crashes and see only car crashes is to deny what is under the surface of the entire film.What is under the surface you ask, emotion and what it means to us is the simplest answer. That's the problem with this review, I'm doing my best to keep this review and not be long winded. Crash doesn't make that easy, it is a complex and thought provoking film, the type that I could write about for paragraph after paragraph. I am fighting the impulse to break the film down in a massively thorough style, but at the same time I hope that by holding myself back I'm not giving the movie the short end of the stick.Okay, that slight case of being sidetracked is behind me, let's get back to the point at hand. Crash is about emotion, the emotion that we experience in our everyday lives. Sex is nothing but heightened emotion, and on that note so are violent acts, death, and so on. Sex is a deeply emotional and personal act, but that doesn't mean it is an act that is individualistic. We get a charge out of sex because it involves more than just ourselves, the same is true of violence. There is an animal power in both, an animal power driven by the emotions and the people present. Crash asks a few simple questions, where do we draw the line on acceptability and should there be any line?Cronenberg directs Crash so that it is dripping with sex. What he does with atmosphere is brilliant. There are moments when the movie isn't sexual in any way, but he has so ingrained sex into the atmosphere that the audience begins to ascribe sexual connotations to every moment of the film. If, as we try to tell ourselves on a daily basis, sex doesn't dominate our lives then why do we so easily view non-sexual scenes as sexual? The camera also fluctuates, at times Cronenberg lets the camera play the role of an observant stalker. At other times he unleashes the camera like a predator on the hunt. The camera ends up leering and slinking about just as much as it is on its hind legs ready to strike. This creates an interesting quandary for the viewer. We are left without steady footing, Cronenberg is constantly jostling us around, never giving the viewer a moment to think they are safe and actually understand what is going on or what will happen next.Fighting the urge to go more in-depth with my analysis is very hard, to counter that impulse I'm going to try and touch on a few more things and then call it a day.There is a connection between sex, cars and violence. In real life this connection rarely, if ever, happens at the same time. There are people who jones for sex, violence, violent sex, cars, violent car crashes or sex in a car. Crash is very real in some aspects, but it doesn't concern itself with staying real or honest. Cronenberg isn't interested in exploring what real connections may exist between sex, violence and cars. Rather, he is interested in exploring what those three say about humanity when they are heightened to the next stage in their evolution.The last thing I'd like to touch on is the acting in Crash. It would be very easy to watch Crash and come away thinking that the cast doesn't bother to do much. That couldn't be further from the truth, and I dare say that I have seen very few performances that match that of Elias Koteas as Vaughan. He is a haunted man, but he's an intelligent man, a man who can't be figured out and doesn't stop to allow the audience to understand him at all. Koteas may be the highlight acting wise, but the rest of the cast delivers as well. Deborah Kara Unger is icy cool, monotone at every second, but her brain is always working. She isn't dull, she functions on a higher level, dissecting all her experiences beneath her stoic exterior. Holly Hunter is the true thrill seeker of the bunch, always looking for her next fix, the where and the how doesn't matter, her character trembles in anticipation of the next "act." James Spader is aloof, and maybe that is just the character Spader plays in every role, but it fits perfectly in Crash. Lastly there is Rosanna Arquette's Gabriella, who enjoys her handicap. She views it a badge of honour and as an exhilarating way to explore more of her sexuality. I'm not saying for a second that you have to like any of their characters, but the performances behind those characters leave a lot to like.

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PimpinAinttEasy

Dear David Cronenberg, I take my hat off to you for making a movie based on Ballard's Crash. It really pushes the limits of what can be put/shown on film. The film was true to the book. You captured the coldness and in-humaneness of these characters who are lost in their sexual fantasies. But like in the book, it is the same sexual fantasy and its variations repeated over and over again. It did get pretty tedious after a while. Ballard wrote this in the introduction to his book - "Crash is an extreme metaphor for an extreme situation." Well, I do spend time at work browsing through pictures of supermodels with whom I would never get to sleep. And I do hold those women up as the ultimate standard of beauty. So that is a bit of an extreme situation as it could lead to disillusionment. I guess this is what Ballard was talking about when he wrote - "the ultimate role of Crash is cautionary, a warning against that brutal, erotic, and overlit realm that beckons more and more persuasively to us from the margins of the technological landscape." The actors looked cold, distant and aroused all the time. Best Regards, Pimpin. (6/10)

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neerajmake-believe

Really take my word, but if you wanna jiggle your tissues, go ahead -here is short version, there is awful story, just about sex, and even not any good ones, just not recommended to anyone, i am serious man, my reviews will always be helpful, i have very critical view points and if you watched the movie and liked it, be sure to watch Pirates XXX 2005 this one will also be your favorite,plus sign up for some porn later on, they are getting cheap now and even better quality and standard, they don't have gay sex in middle of something, In Short this movie is for psychopaths, and criminals, other weirdos. please like my review for future , down to earth, non-profit, unbiased reviews to short up time for watching bad bad movies.

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freemantle_uk

Based on a novel by J.G. Ballad Crash was a highly controversial film when it was first released when it was released in 1996 for its depiction of sex and violence. Whilst it is controversial for a few scenes, its actual problem is that it a bad film. Director David Cronenberg has made so excellent films in many different genres, but Crash is a very shallow, nihilistic film about nothing. There are many problems with the film, it has the visual look and style of a TV film, characters with not much characterisation, people speaking in quiet tones and James Spader was a bland lead. Despite the film's attempts to have a said about the changing nature of sexuality in the world of technology, a look at subcultures, how people enjoy danger and thrills and sexual fetishes. But on the whole Crash is a film that has nothing to say about its subject matter and this is Cronenberg at his worst.

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