After surviving a brutal car wreck, commercial director James Ballard finds himself slowly drawn to a mysterious subculture of people who have transformed automobile accidents into erotic events. Like the J.G. Ballard novel that inspired it, David Cronenberg's study of the sexual dimension of man's relationship to technology was a magnet for controversy, drawing a NC-17 rating and criticism from several sources, including studio owner Ted Turner, who attempted to prevent the film's American
release. But though some have leveled charges of pornography, James' descent into this fetishistic underworld is approached with cold, scientific detachment. Characters like Vaughn, the charismatic group leader who stages recreations of celebrity car crashes, seem more like driven researchers than sexual renegades, which is undoubtedly part of the film's point. This impression is reinforced by the pristine cinematography by Peter Suschitzsky, which proves particularly haunting during a crucial accident scene, and Howard Shore's superb score. Far from exploitative, Crash in fact proves less transgressive than the original novel, but is still undoubtedly not for all tastes. ~ Judd Blaise, Rovi
While the director remains firmly behind the wheel for the first hour or so, he cracks up toward the end with sequences that send the film and the audience into a ditch.
Mr. Cronenberg, for once oddly inhibited by brazen subject matter, has made a meticulously stylized and controlled film that leaves many of its characters' ideas muffled and lacks the true audacity its material demands.
"Crash" doesn't extend beyond its most immediate sensationalism. When the movie does attempt to find a theme, it slams into a brick wall of mumbo-jumbo.
So far from being involving or compelling, so intentionally disconnected from any kind of recognizable emotion, that by comparison David Lynch's removed "Lost Highway" plays like "Lassie Come Home."
It's a dark, disturbing, languorous movie, as ludicrous, hermetic and repetitive, perhaps, as Ballard's original, but admirably assured and true to itself.
Crash is a violently rare exception to the continually careful stride of film, and few films have been made with such a conviction to such inherently controversial material.
I seem to have been the only person who HADN'T seen this movie so I decided to give it a watch and at the end of it, I kinda wish I had remained a Crash virgin for the rest of my life. Don't get me wrong, I love gratuitous sex on many levels but this film just didn't deliver any real plot to me. So they were in a car
crash, then they became nymphs? If there is any poetry in this movie it was lost on me. Half a star for the idea, which was original, half a star for the Cronenberg name and then one massive star for the tattoo sucking scene between Spader and Koteas.
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