In American filmmaker Paul Haggis’s film ‘Crash’ cuts in and out of the lives of different groups of people who connect with each other over a two day period in Los Angeles, with a horrific car accident being the inciting incident.

The characters include an Afro American police detective with a drug addicted mother and a thieving younger brother, two young Afro American car thieves who are forever philosophizing about society’s problems, a stressed district attorney and his irritable wife, a racist veteran cop and his idealistic partner who is appalled by him, a successful Afro American Hollywood film director and his wife, an immigrant Iranian shopkeeper and his family, and a Hispanic locksmith and his family.

This was a film with full force impact. It was a movie similar in nature and theme to ‘Grand Canyon’. It felt like the filmmaker was making an important statement-about how contemporary American society was going through something like a civil war that was becoming increasingly unmanageable, with so many different racial, social and ethnic groups at odds. It begged the question, how long society could keep on adequately function when such terrible tensions exist?!

Haggis, whose previous credits include a screenwriting credit for ‘Million Dollar Baby’, assembled a marvelous cast for the film. The cast included Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Brandon Fraser and Thandle Newton, and they all gave credible, intense performances. ‘Crash’ also benefited from being a great looking film, thanks to James Muro’s cinematographer.