An absorbing movie !

Watched the movie "Crash" recently. I did expect the movie to be good, but did not expect that, it would be this good. The movie is a study of various play and by-plays between various ethnic groups in an highly charged LA environment. It is an amazing take on the subject of racism - eventually, it comes down to the fact racism is not about the differences in the physical appearances, but within our own mind on how we perceive and assume the other to be. An excellent and taut script with several separate characters and events moving towards a point, where they are intricately inter-twined. 

Even though the movie starts off with negativity, where every character appears to be racist, when put on the line of fire, most of them tend to do the right thing. There are several stand out scenes, acted and emoted in an outstanding way - where the racist policeman (Matt Dillon) pulls out his earlier victim (Thandie Newton) from the burning car after having felt her up the previous day in a stop, where the Shaoun Toub (Persian storekeeper) goes to shoot the locksmith (Michael Pena) and both are saved by the impenetrable cloak of Pena's 5 year old daughter, Terence' Howard (as the man whose dignity was violated by Dillon on that stop)'s second brush with the police. Actually, come to think of it, there isn't one frame that is wasted in the movie - most absorbing !

The thing I thought as I was watching this movie was - there is too much anger/angst in every character - their starting point of interaction with the other is mistrust. And towards the end, Sandra Bullock echoed that :-) All in all For people who liked this style of movies where multiple story-lines come together (Pulp Fiction, Traffic, Babel, Syriana or my own story - mysterious ways :-) ), this is a movie to watch. I would place this movie much much higher than those; and I'm a Pulp Fiction fanatic; but I believe for sheer movie making this is a must-watch. Highly riveting.